2.2. MFiX Installation on Mac

MFiX is supported on the MacOS platform as of MFiX release 22.2. We provide installable packages for both Intel and M1-based Macs. In the following, arm64 refers to M1 (Apple Silicon) and x86_64 refers to Intel CPUs.

If you have an issue running or installing MFiX on your system, ask for help at Support forum.

2.2.1. Install Anaconda

Download the Python 3, Mac version of Anaconda (~500 MB download) or Miniconda (~50 MB download). Either the Graphical Installer or Command Line Installer would work. Choose the M1 version if you have a newer Mac with Apple Silicon CPU.

For instance, with the Anaconda Graphical Installer:

  1. Open up Finder and navigate to the Download directory.

  2. Double-click the downloaded file. (At the time of writing, Anaconda3-2022.05-MacOSX-x86_64.pkg or Anaconda3-2022.05-MacOSX-arm64.pkg for for Graphical Installer).

  3. Follow the installation guide, using the default settings.

2.2.1.1. Alternative: Install Miniforge/mamba

Miniforge is a version of miniconda which is set up by default to use the conda-forge package repository (which MFiX uses), and also the mamba package manager, which is a version of conda that was rewritten for better performance.

If you already have an Anaconda installation, you may continue to use it, but if you have never installed MFiX before you may want to try miniforge, for smaller download and faster installation.

Download the Mambaforge MacOSX installer for either arm64 (Apple Silicon) or x86_64 (Intel), depending on your hardware, from the Miniforge release page, and run it.

At the time of writing, the current mambaforge release is 4.12.0-2 and the files are Mambaforge-4.12.0-2-MacOSX-arm64.sh and Mambaforge-4.12.0-2-MacOSX-x86_64.sh.

In order to use mamba, replace the conda command by mamba in the following instructions. If there is any problem with a mamba command, you can try again with conda - note that mamba is still somewhat new and may occasionally exhibit bugs.

2.2.2. Install MFiX

After installing Anaconda or Miniforge, install MFiX:

  1. Open a Terminal (Type “⌘-Spacebar”, type “terminal”)

  2. Browse to MFiX Download (requires registration and login)

  3. Copy the conda command.

  4. Paste it in the Terminal.

  5. If using Miniforge, change conda to mamba at the start of the command.

  6. Press enter to run the command

Note

If you already installed MFiX, you may see the following message. Select y to confirm.

WARNING: A conda environment already exists
Remove existing environment (y/[n])? y

MFiX will be installed in a new conda environment. The process may take a few minutes to complete.

2.2.3. Install Solver Build Dependencies

Build dependencies are needed for building a Custom Solver.

Building the MFiX solver requires:

  • Fortran 2003 compiler (GFortran 4.8 or later)

  • CMake

  • For DMP support, an MPI implementation (such as OpenMPI)

Fortran and CMake are already provided with the conda package. OpenMPI can be obtained from conda-forge via the command conda install -c conda-forge openmpi (or alternately mamba install openmpi if using Miniforge).

For building with other compilers, or for building with DMP, see Building Custom Interactive Solver.

2.2.4. Run MFiX

Open Terminal (if not open already), and run the following commands:

  1. Run conda activate mfix-22.4

  2. Run mfix⏎

Your prompt should look something like this:

> conda env list
# conda environments:
#
base        *  /Users/user/anaconda3
mfix-22.4      /Users/user/anaconda3/envs/mfix-22.4

> conda activate mfix-22.4
(mfix-22.4) > conda env list
# conda environments:
#
base           /Users/user/anaconda3
mfix-22.4   *  /Users/user/anaconda3/envs/mfix-22.4

(mfix-22.4) > mfix

You are now ready to proceed to the First tutorial and Tutorials.

Note

Activating a conda environment sets certain environment variables such as PATH in the current shell. It does not create a new shell session.

You will need to activate the environment every time before running MFiX.

2.2.5. Deactivate Conda Environment

After using MFiX you can just exit to leave the Terminal session. However, if you need to deactivate the mfix-22.4 conda environment, you can do so with:

(mfix-22.4)> conda deactivate
>

This returns to the base conda environment.

2.2.6. Uninstall MFiX

To uninstall MFiX from a conda environment:

(mfix-22.4)> conda uninstall mfix

To remove the conda environment (if you have the environment activated, deactivate it first):

(mfix-22.4)> conda deactivate
> conda env remove -n mfix-22.4

To uninstall Anaconda entirely, remove the Anaconda directory. By default, ~/anaconda3 in your home directory. From the Terminal:

> cd ~
> rm -rf anaconda3/

If using Miniforge, note that the directory is ~/mambaforge

Note

To learn more about managing conda environments, visit the conda documentation .