Discussion Forum

There are problems with COMSOL 3.5a (with hotfix1) and Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6). I only found out after upgrading and I have definitely encountered problems. So far it looks like the program will run through to a solution but then you will have problems with the plotting of results. I have been told that there will be a fix released in October. In the meantime, if you need to use COMSOL on a Mac, don't upgrade to 10.6.

Yes that is right. There is also a Knowledge Base Solution dealing with the issue.
www.comsol.com/support/knowledgebase/1053/
Niklas Rom, COMSOL

There are problems with COMSOL 3.5a (with hotfix1) and Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6). I only found out after upgrading and I have definitely encountered problems. So far it looks like the program will run through to a solution but then you will have problems with the plotting of results. I have been told that there will be a fix released in October. In the meantime, if you need to use COMSOL on a Mac, don't upgrade to 10.6.

A friend of mine is trying to install comsol 3.5 on his brand new Macbook Pro.

The installer simply quits. If you use the command line, you can see:

$ sudo /Volumes/COMSOL35/COMSOL\ Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/ComsolLauncher
Password:
Preparing to install COMSOL...
Extracting temporary COMSOL installer components in /tmp/setup.354...
Archive: /Volumes/COMSOL35/archives/fl.isa
inflating: /tmp/setup.354/vm/fl.tar
FATAL ERROR (unknown computer architecture), Installation aborted.

Installation failed.

I am assuming this is because he is trying to install on 10.6. I had COMSOL 3.5a installed on 10.5 and then upgraded to 10.6. COMSOL would run but would give errors such as described earlier in this thread. Unless you hear otherwise from COMSOL support, I suspect that your friend will need to wait for the patch in early October.

No.

This issue is somewhat deeper.

I loaned him my macbook running 10.5.8, connected his macbook harddisk using a USB convertor, and tried to install it onto the volume.

Two things happened :

1. First installation complained about lack of space on the target disk (he has about 55G free). I am assuming that the installer does not play nicely with installed mounted volumes. Still it permitted the installation to continue, which completed without errors.

2. Then I replaced the hard disk into his macbook, and tried to fire up the app. It crashes without any message. He has even tried booting into the 32 bit mode (-x32), and it does not work.

This would seem to suggest that COMSOL 3.5 does not work with Mac OSX Snow Leopard 10.6, not installation, not execution. This does not agree with your experience (installing it onto Leopard first and then upgrading to Snow Leopard). I am guessing certain paths were set to /Volumes/Macintosh HD 1 instead of /Volumes/Macintosh HD at install time.

I found three under bin (in comsol, comsolapi and comsolapic). Fixing those does not help. Maybe its hardcoded.

Sorry to update preistoric discussion, but I have the same problem on Mac.
My 3.5 version doesn't seem to work under Post-Processing, it just doesn't display anything on video.
Is there any fix or patch for this?

: Mac OS 10.6

I have a reason to ask something like this.
At University on all the Pcs it's installed version 3.5, and many people told me that i can't read file saved on v3.5 with the 4.0. That's the matter.
No fix existing then?

Hi

always many reasons to use older stuff, but indeed v4 can only read v3.5a, but 3.5a can read and save older 3.5, or 3.4 ... Normally, with V4 you have a utilitity to translate files via 3.5a, at least its worth to read the installation guide, and take a talk to your local COMSOL rep.

I have v3.5a only to translate a few older files, when that, sometimes happen, but 99.9% of the time I reconstruct new and fresh in V4, at most I import an older geometry, but I do open older files in 3.5a, to cut&paste formulas etc
and 3.5a CANNOT read v4, neither not v4 in matalab .m format, that is all too different

--
Good luck
Ivar

Thanks for your answer.

Then I can use v4.0 to read v3.5 files, but not viceversa?
That's the real purpose of the question..

Hi

v4 can read 3.5a (I'm not sure about v3.5 plain, you might need to update them to 3.5a first).

In any case I can only strongly suggest to you to use v4.2 that is coming out next month for new training, specially as the 4.0 was an early version after a major reset of the programme and was in no way "ironed out". I started only to use the latest patched v4.1 for serious work. It's not that much the small errors, I do not find that many even in the early 4.0, but far more the frustration to have to reset your solver and results regularly

--
Good luck
Ivar

I'll follow your suggestion.

Thank you very much!!

M. Singh,

I am not sure if it is version 3.5a or some hotfix to that that fixes to the problem with OS X 10.6. However, I have 3.5a (bulid 3.5.0.608) and it most certainly works with the latest version of OSX (10.6.6).

Hope this helps,

Mike

Glad to know this!
I think i'll check the situation with the hotfix1,i'll let you know as soon as possible!

Thanks for letting us know your experience!

I had the same issue trying to install COMSOL 3.5a on an iMac12,2 (3.4GHz Intel Core i7) running system 10.6.7. The way I got it to work is to boot in 32bit mode (press 3&2 at startup). This allowed for the installation from the DVD, and I followed up by installing the relevant patches (comsol_3.5.0.608_macintel64 and comsol_3.5.0.608-p3_mac)