Starting in 2025R1, Ansys Lumerical products ship with a built-in Mesa 3D library. The article will outline how you can select whether to use this library, or your system’s graphics library.
The selection of whether the build-in Mesa library or the system’s graphics library is used will only affect the visualizer and plots, and to a lesser extent, the Classic Viewport. Launching with or without this library will not affect graphics functionalities of the Modern Viewport, or any other graphics functionalities of the software.
Linux
By default, products on Linux will launch with the Mesa library, see the Knowledge Base article on running the CAD/IDE on Linux for more information on how to invoke commands for each product.
To launch Lumerical products without the Mesa library, append “-non-mesa” to the end of the start up script.
Example
To launch FDTD without our Mesa 3D library, use the following command
/opt/lumerical/[[verpath]]/bin/fdtd-solutions-non-mesa
Note: Launching the launcher without the Mesa library is not supported, when the launcher is used, all products will always be launched with the Mesa library.
Windows
Ansys Lumerical products will automatically launch with the optimal settings on Windows. If the system’s OpenGL version is newer than 3.2, the system’s graphics library will be used, otherwise, the built-in Mesa library will be used.
The usage of the Mesa library is indicated in the following file:
<user>\AppData\Roaming\Lumerical\Shared.ini
Usage of the built-in Mesa library is indicated by the line, note that this line will only appear if the product had been launched with the built-in Mesa library:
UseSoftwareRendering=true
You can also select manually whether to use the built-in Mesa library using the command above in the shared.ini file, however, the application will change it back if the system OpenGL does not meet requirements.
See Also