Altair FEKO compatibility with MAC OS

Mateusz Rzymowski
Mateusz Rzymowski New Altair Community Member
edited November 2023 in Community Q&A

Dear Community,

I was wondering if the Altair FEKO is can be installed and work properly on Mac OS, especially with the new Apple computers equipped with M-series processors? If there is any proven experience I would be grateful for information as I didn't find any official information regarding that issue.

 

Tagged:

Answers

  • Raja Devata
    Raja Devata
    Altair Employee
    edited November 2023

    Hi,

    Altair FEKO Is not supported on Mac OS and officially supported only on Windows and Linux Machines.  I hope this information helps you. 

    Thanks!

  • Yunchong Tang
    Yunchong Tang Altair Community Member
    edited November 2023

    I have the same question with you. So I tried, here is my finding:

    1. I used an open-source program for Apple Silicon Mac called Whisky which is based on Wine and Apple Gaming Porting Toolkit mainly for gaming. For the hardware, I am using a MacBook Pro 2021 with the M1 Pro chip running MacOS Sonoma 14.1.

    2. Install Feko via the installer will fail, however, it is okay to copy an installed Feko to the Mac and then use the License Manager to activate it. The installation path needs to be exactly the same i.e. C:/Program Files/Altair/2022.3, otherwise, you will be unable to open any .cfx file.

    cadFeko:

    3. Although Whisky is able to transcode DirectX to Metal API, the only working rendering option for me is software rendering which is no longer supported by the new cadFeko which seems using OpenGL 1.2. To use the software rendering you need to use the legacy cadFeko and change the rendering option from there.

    4. In the legacy cadFeko the 3D model can be rendered successfully and no graphical artifact. In my opinion, it is more than enough to edit a model.

     

    Feko Solver:

    5. The Feko Solver is unable to run due to the Intel MPI error which may be caused by Feko and other components were not installed properly.

    imagepostFeko:

    6. Same as cadFeko, it runs well using software rendering.

     

    TLDR, I will consider running Feko on an Apple Silicon Mac as usable except it can not run Feko Solver. However, you can edit any model on the Mac and then transfer it to a server to finish the solution and check the result on the Mac. Finally, I am using free open-source software, other paid alternatives such as Crossover, Parallel, and Vmware may run Feko better. 

    If you or anyone has an interest in digging in deeper, please let me know, thank you.

Categories