User guide

This section provides an overview of how you use PyMechanical.

PyMechanical overview

The launch_mechanical() method creates an instance of the Mechanical class in the background and sends commands to it as a service. Because errors and warnings are processed Pythonically, you can develop a script in real time without worrying about whether the script functions correctly when deployed in batch mode.

Here is how you use the launch_mechanical() method to launch Mechanical from Python in gRPC mode:

import os
from ansys.mechanical.core import launch_mechanical

mechanical = launch_mechanical()

When Mechanical is active, you can send commands to it as a genuine Python class. For example, you can send a Python script:

result = mechanical.run_python_script('2+3')
result = mechanical.run_python_script('ExtAPI.DataModel.Project.ProjectDirectory')

Mechanical interactively returns the result of each command that you send, storing the result to the logging module.

Errors are caught immediately. In the following code, an invalid command is sent, and an error is raised:

 >>> mechanical.run_python_script('2****3')

grpc.RpcError:
"unexpected token '**'"

Because the error is caught immediately, you can write your Mechanical scripts in Python, run them interactively, and then run them in batch without worrying if the script runs correctly. This would not be the case if you had instead outputted the script that you wrote to a script file.

The Mechanical class supports much more than sending text to Mechanical. It includes higher-level wrapping that provides for better scripting and interaction with Mechanical. For information on various advanced methods for interacting with Mechanical, see Examples.