Ancient Pro Mechanica Motion on Windows 7

[dsimpson]

We have an old licence of PTC Pro Mechanica standalone (Wildfire 2, datecode M280). Structure runs happily on Windows 7, as does the Motion UI, but I cannot get the Motion UI to connect to the Engine to run motion analyses. The response I get is:

COMMAND:

Opening "..\..\..\..\Work\Temp\Mass_modes_01" ...

The model "..\..\..\..\Work\Temp\Mass_modes_01" is now current.

COMMAND:

Run

Checking validity of design study ...

Starting a private Mechanica Motion engine ...

Unable to connect to the Mechanica Motion engine.

*** WARNING *** Unable to connect to the Mechanica Motion engine.

*** WARNING *** Save model and exit.

COMMAND:

It seems to be possibly an installation issue, as the 64bit install has a different working directory (C:\CAE\PTC\mechWF2\x86e_win64) to previous 32bit installs.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to resolve this? I have MS Visual C++ installed and DotNET 3.5 running, but no joy!!

Thanks for any suggestions, Dominic

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[unickque]

Yes Win7 handles the architecture variable a little differently.

Two options that i can think of:

1. Find the batch file that starts your Motion UI. In it, there will be statements like

if "%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%" == "x86" set MC=i486_nt

You can simply override these by setting the MC variable manuall, something like

set MC=i486_nt

(Make sure to put this statement behind the ones that are already there!)

2. Alternatively, you can have your Motion UI make an analysis batch file that contains your analysis. Then you can alter that batch file to point to the right location of the Motion Engine. Then start batch file.

[dsimpson]

Swapping architecture doesn't work - simply stops the Motion GUI working at all.

Not sure how to create a motion batch file as opposed to the structure ones, which we did regularly.

Just trying a 32bit install instead to see whether that works.  I wonder whether the problem is that it needs a 64bit C compiler.....