Using self compiled TexGen on other machines

[lambert8809]

Dear all,

I have compiled texgen on 64 bit windows on my desktop. Now I want to use the compiled TexGenGUI.exe on another computer. I understand it will not work if I only copy TexGenGUI.exe to the other computer, so I want to know what other files I need to copy along with TexGenGUI.exe so that it will run on the other computer. Thank you for your kind help.


Thanks

======================================
Xin Liu
PhD Candidate, Graduate Teaching Assistant
Multiscale Structural Mechanics Group
School of Aeronautics & Astronautics
Purdue University
West Lafayette, Indiana
======================================

[louisepb]

Hi Xin,
You will need to use one of the installer programs in the Installer folder. You will find a 'HowtoBuildWindowsInstaller.txt' file which will guide you through the process. I think you have built with VS2013(?) in which case you will need to modify the NSIS script to use the appropriate versions of the msvcp and msvcr dll's (I guess these will probably be msvcp120.dll and msvcr120.dll. If you haven't built with OpenCascade then you will need to remove these files as well.

Hope that helps,
Louise

[lambert8809]

Hi Louise,

Thank you for your reply. I followed your instructions and it works, but I don't have "TexGen.chm" and "TexGenGUI.exe.manifest" files, so I removed them from the installer script, I hope it will not have bad effects on the code.

Thanks
Xin

[louisepb]

Hi Xin,
TexGen.chm is the compiled documentation file so your installation will be fine without that. The manifest file was included because with VS2008 wxWidgets gave a problem if the manifest was embedded in the GUI project build. It seems not to be an issue with later versions of VS.

Glad you got it working. It would be interesting to hear about your application of TexGen.

Best regards,
Louise

[lambert8809]

Hi Louise,

I followed your instructions and made an installer. It works on my computer (64 bits Windows 7) and it can also be installed on another 64 bits windows 10 machine. However, after I installed it on that windows 10 computer, I cannot open it. I double clicked the "TexGenGUI.exe", but it doesn't give me any responses. I tried to directly install the TexGen from your website instead of using my compiled Texgen, and it works. I have no idea where goes wrong about my compiled Texgen. The installation folder looks like the attachment. I don't know if you have met the same problem. Thank you for your kind help.


Thanks
Xin

[louisepb]

Hi Xin,

The most likely thing is that you have a missing dependency. You can check for this using Dependency Walker available here: http://www.dependencywalker.com/ It will show up if there are any libraries missing.

Alternatively, have you modified the TexGen code? I guess you may have done as you're compiling it yourself. In that case check your changes.

Hope that helps,
Louise

[lambert8809]

Hi Louise,

Thank you for you reply. Let me briefly introduce what am doing with TexGen. My group is studying constitutive modeling of composite materials. If my understanding is correct, TexGen is mainly focused on generating the geometry of woven fabrics and provides input files and scripts for other FEA software to calculate material properties.

Instead of using RVE analysis, we use another approach to get material properties (Yu, W.: "A Unified Theory for Constitutive Modeling of Composites," Journal of Mechanics of Materials and Structures, vol. 11, no. 4, 2016, pp. 379-411.) and we have the code named SwiftComp which is available at https://cdmhub.org/tools/scstandard to do the calculation. So I am integrating SwiftComp into TexGen so that users can directly get material properties within TexGen and don't need to go to another FEA software. Now we have a 1.0 version called TexGen4SC on https://cdmhub.org/tools/texgen4sc , which can provide material stiffness matrix for solid and ABD matrix for plate/shell according the model generating by TexGen. All the source code and manual are attached https://cdmhub.org/resources/texgen4sc/supportingdocs . I have run some simple tests, and the results show that difference using our approach and RVE analysis is within 1%.

Now we are facing several issues:

1. The website version is built on Linux system, and there are some displaying issues. It doesn't affect calculation but it looks weird. One thing I found unusual is that shared build option of vtk is required to disable on Windows system, but we must set it enabled on Linux otherwise the build fails. As the displaying issues look like caused by renderer, so I guess it is caused by vtk components. I wonder if you have met the same problem when you build TexGen on Linux system?

2. I used the dependency software you suggested, but I cannot find the error. I checked the output for both my compiled code and the code directly download from your website, and they are the same. I only modified several files and add two files in GUI part, I don't think these changes will affect installer.


Look forward to hear your advice. Thank you for your kind help.


Thanks
Xin

[louisepb]

Hi Xin,

Thank you for your information about your project. It looks interesting. I see that you have asked on your download page for TexGen4SC to be cited if used. Would it also be possible to ask for TexGen itself to be cited please? Could I just confirm what you have done in adding to the software? It looks from your modified code like you are calling a separate SwiftComp executable from a modified version of TexGen. Have I interpreted that correctly? I'm not an IP expert but I think that is ok with the TexGen GPL license. Could you confirm that you're not incorporating a SwiftComp library built with TexGen which would then also need to be open source (I can't see any SwiftComp code available).

I'm afraid that I have never found the source of the flickering display in the Linux build. All our users here use the Windows version or just use the Linux version on our HPC without any rendering so it's never been a high enough priority for me to spend time investigating it.

Could you clarify which downloaded version of TexGen works for you? The Python26 version is built with VS2008 and seems to install on all systems with no problem. The Python27 version is built with VS2012 and seems to work on some systems and not others. I haven't got to the bottom of this but I think that it may be something to do with the bundled Python installation - works fine on my development machine which has Python 27 installed but not on my colleague's machine which doesn't. Which Python version did you use for your installation? This could possibly be the problem. Is there any correlation between which machines your installation work on and which have Python pre-installed? If not, I'm afraid I'm not sure what else to suggest.

Sorry not to be more help,
Louise

[lambert8809]

Hi Louise,

Thank you for your reply. The citation is automatically generated by the website, but I will contact the administrator to see if he can add another citation for TexGen. SwiftComp is an independent executable file, and I just added the codes to transform TexGen output to SwiftComp input and call SwiftComp from TexGen. So you are correct and it is ok with TexGen GPL license.

I am using TexGen 3.8.2 which I think is the latest version, and I am using python2.7. I also feel this problem is somehow with the Python I used for compiled TexGen, because the installer you provided works on any machine. I will try other installation methods, but I am not sure if I can solve this problem. I am thinking if it is possible for you to help me compile the installer after I test all the modified codes, I can send you all the modified codes or do a svn to the repository.

Regarding to flickering display, do you mean this is a known issue for Linux version? Another thing I want to confirm with you is that I found TexGen is linked with shared vtk lib files in Linux while static lib files in Windows. Did you compiled TexGen on Linux using shared VTK lib files?


Thank you again for your kind help. We are now planning to do some contributions on TexGen in composites mechanical modelling.


Thanks
Xin

[louisepb]

Hi Xin,

Yes, the flickering on the Linux build is a known issue. I just tried building it with shared VTK lib files and it didn't seem to make much difference so I don't think that's the issue. I'm afraid that I don't have time to hunt it down at the moment.

Best regards,
Louise

[lambert8809]

Hi Louise,

Thank you very much for your reply and help. We are going to add citation about TexGen on our website, can you tell me which citation should I use? I found several papers like "Long, A. C., and L. P. Brown. "Modelling the geometry of textile reinforcements for composites: TexGen." Composite reinforcements for optimum performance. Cambridge: Woodhead Publishing Ltd (2011): 239-64." and "Lin, Hua, Louise P. Brown, and Andrew C. Long. "Modelling and simulating textile structures using TexGen." Advanced Materials Research. Vol. 331. Trans Tech Publications, 2011.". Please tell me which one should I use.


Thanks
Xin

[louisepb]

Hi Xin,

It's probably better to use the second reference as that's more widely available than the first. Thanks very much for doing that.

Best wishes,
Louise

[loyal979]

Hi all,
I have compiled TexGen on Linux and I am just wondering on how to open the GUI in there? I have installed TexGen V 3.10. any suggestions

Thank you
Matt

[louisepb]

Hi Matt,

Have you built the code? In order to get the GUI working you will have to be able to access the VTK and wxWidgets libraries. Once you have built with both the renderer and GUI options you should be able to run the TexGenGUI.exe file to open the GUI.

Hope that helps,
Louise

[loyal979]

Hi Louise,

I have built the code and I did display the version of TexGen installed. but I am not sure on how to run the TexGenGUI.exe (I dont see it within the files). is it possible to run it through python?

Thanks
Matt