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reference · Reviewed 2026-08-27

Siemens

Rescale supports the Siemens Simcenter portfolio: Simcenter STAR-CCM+ for CFD and multiphysics, Simcenter 3D for multi-discipline structural, thermal, and flow analysis, Simcenter Nastran for FEM solves, and Simcenter Amesim for system simulation. You can run these in batch, or inside a workstation that attaches the Simcenter UI to a compute cluster. This page gives you one entry point per product family, with pointers to the relevant Help Center articles.

Running Simcenter on Rescale​

You run Simcenter jobs for the same reasons customers run any HPC workload on Rescale: to scale past the bounds of a laptop or on-prem cluster, to run sensitivity sweeps quickly, and to avoid waiting in queues. Rescale provides managed versions of STAR-CCM+, Simcenter 3D, Nastran, and Amesim in the software catalog, and you bring your own Siemens license server (on-premises, cloud-hosted, or through a Rescale Company License Proxy).

Each product supports two main execution modes:

  • Batch jobs run headless. You supply a .sim file, a .dat deck, or an .xml input, and Rescale spins up a cluster, runs the solver, and returns results.
  • Workstations run the Simcenter UI in your browser, for setup and post-processing. A workstation supports multi-node hardware, so you can also submit a solve from the session and watch it run live.

Simcenter STAR-CCM+​

STAR-CCM+ is a multiphysics CAE package covering CFD, CSM, electromagnetics, heat transfer, multiphase flow, particle dynamics, reacting flow, aero-acoustics, and rheology. On Rescale, the standard STAR-CCM+ CLI drives the solver.

A typical batch command looks like:

starccm+ -power -np $RESCALE_CORES_PER_SLOT -machinefile $HOME/machinefile -batch solve.java -load model.sim

Useful flags:

  • -batch runs headlessly with no UI.
  • -power requests a parallel solve.
  • -rsh ssh tells STAR-CCM+ to use SSH between nodes.
  • -np and -machinefile come from the environment Rescale sets up on the cluster.

Guides in the Rescale Help Center:

STAR-CCM+ production patterns​

For longer-running STAR-CCM+ work, the Help Center documents several patterns that regularly come up:

Simcenter 3D​

Simcenter 3D is a unified 3D CAE environment with solvers for structural, acoustics, flow, thermal, motion, and composites analysis. On Rescale, you typically create inputs inside Simcenter 3D on a Rescale Desktop, submit the generated .xml to the batch cluster with run-nx, and transfer results back to Simcenter 3D for viewing.

A basic Simcenter 3D Thermal/Flow launch command:

run-nx -i InputFile.xml

Useful flags:

  • -p disables parallelization.
  • -t runs only the view factor calculation in parallel.

No parallel configuration file is required. Rescale sets up parallel configuration automatically during cluster bring-up.

Simcenter thermal/flow solves are memory intensive, and not every internal solver parallelizes across nodes. Before you scale a coupled analysis out, read running Simcenter in parallel on Rescale, which lists which solvers in the sequence are multithreaded, which are single-node only, and where out-of-memory failures come from.

Simcenter Nastran​

Simcenter Nastran (previously NX Nastran) is a premier FEM solver for linear and nonlinear structural analysis, dynamic response, acoustics, rotor dynamics, aeroelasticity, thermal analysis, and optimization. Rescale provides both NX Nastran Basic and NX Nastran Advanced tiles.

A typical command:

nastran model.dat dmp=$RESCALE_NODES_PER_SLOT smp=$RESCALE_CORES_PER_NODE sscr=100gb mem=12gb smem=3gb hosts=$NX_HOSTS scratch=yes batch=no

The Rescale environment sets $RESCALE_NODES_PER_SLOT, $RESCALE_CORES_PER_NODE, and $NX_HOSTS for you. Tune sscr, mem, and smem based on your model size.

Nastran writes results in either XDB or OP2 format, set by PARAM,POST,0 and PARAM,POST,-1 respectively. Which one you want depends on what reads the results downstream, so decide before the run rather than re-solving. See XDB vs OP2 output formats in NX Nastran.

Simcenter Amesim​

Simcenter Amesim is a 1D system simulation platform for multi-domain system modeling. Rescale hosts Amesim as a workstation-oriented tile. Use Browsing the Catalog to check which versions are available to your organization.

Siemens HEEDS​

HEEDS optimization workflows can run as Rescale batch jobs. The recommended pattern is to submit the HEEDS driver as the entry point, use Rescale hardware variables inside the wrapper script, and let HEEDS orchestrate the inner STAR-CCM+, Nastran, or user-defined solves. For a worked example, see the HEEDS and NX optimization workflow, which covers pointing HEEDS at the solver install path on Rescale.

Workstations for Siemens work​

Run STAR-CCM+ or Simcenter 3D interactively on a workstation: set up the model in the GUI, submit solves, and post-process results in the same session. Key points:

  • The desktop is Linux. Some Simcenter tools are also available as Windows workstation tiles.
  • Files sync automatically between the session and Rescale Files — see workstation files.
  • Save session files to your work folder. Anything outside it is not uploaded to results.
  • Suspend when you step away, and terminate when done, to stop billing.

Troubleshooting and deeper guidance​

The Rescale Help Center covers the most frequently hit Siemens issues, including:

If a Simcenter job shows "Running" but output stops updating, start with verifying that your solver is actually running. Note that STAR-CCM+ uses ~/work even on multi-node jobs, because it manages its own networking.