Abaqus user subroutines handling

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SIMULIA After reviewing numerous posts on Abaqus subroutines, I found the information online to be disorganized. Here, I put a post to summarize some fundamental approaches for future reference.

  1. Compatibility between Abaqus, Intel Visual Fortran (IVF), and Visual Studio (VS) can be given through the following compatibility tables:

Abaqus and Intel Fortran/Visual Studio Compatibility

Abaqus version Intel Fortran version Visual Studio version
6.8 v9.1, v10.0, v10.1 and above 2005
6.9 v9.1, v10.0, v10.1 and above 2005, 2008
6.10 v10.1, v11.0, v11.1 and above 2008, 2010
6.11 v10.1, v11.0, v11.1 and above 2008, 2010
6.12 v10.1, v11.0, v11.1 and above 2008, 2010

Fortran and Visual Studio Compatibility

Intel Fortran version Visual Studio version
v10.0 2003, 2005
v10.1(10.1.019 later) 2003, 2005, 2008
v11.0, v11.1 2003, 2005, 2008
v12.0, v12.1 (XE2011) 2005, 2008, 2010
v13.0 (XE2013) 2008, 2010, 2012

  1. Using Subroutines on a System Without Abaqus Installed:

    If you’re working with a subroutine code file named usersub.for and a model file abc.inp:

    • On a system without Intel Fortran installed, run: abaqus make library=usersub

    • For the Standard module, standardU.dll will be generated; for the Explicit module, ExplicitU.dll and ExplicitU-D.dll will be generated.

    • Store the library files in any directory, e.g., D:\abc1\abc2\abc3\abc4.

    • Open the Abaqus environment variable file abaqus_v6.env, and append the following line:

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       usub_lib_dir="D:\abc1\abc2\abc3\abc4"

      (Note: Replace \ with \\; if you’re unable to modify abaqus_v6.env in the Abaqus installation directory, save the modified environment variable file in the same directory as the .inp file).

    • Run the calculation with abaqus job=abc.inp.

  2. After Installing Abaqus and Compatible Intel Fortran and Visual Studio:

    You can check if the components are recognized by running Abaqus info=system. Sometimes, due to incorrect system environment variable settings, it is necessary to manually import batch files for setting Visual Studio and Intel Fortran environment variables. Typically, these are vsvars32.bat and ifortvars.bat for 32-bit systems, or vsvarsamd64.bat and ifortvars.bat for 64-bit systems. These files are located in the installation folders of Visual Studio and Intel Fortran, respectively.

    To automate this, consider creating a batch file to replace manual operations. Here’s an example from my experience,

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@echo off
call “C:\Program Files (x86)\Intel\Compiler\Fortran0.1.021\em64t\bin\ifortvars.bat”
call “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin\amd64\vcvarsamd64.bat”
abaqus info=system