Getting NiCE

This page describes the process by which users can download and use NiCE. Detailed instructions on building NiCE are available on the Compiling NiCE From Scratch page.

Table of Contents

• Prerequisites
  • Sample Data
  • VisIt
  • HDF5
  • 3D Graphics
• Downloading NiCE
• Running NiCE
• What do I do if NiCE fails to run?
• Install Problems: Tips & Tricks
  • VisIt
  • HDF5

Prerequisites

NiCE requires Java 1.6 or greater. Sun's version of Java can be used on Linux, Windows or Mac and the OpenJDK can also be used Linux and Mac. The NiCE Development Team prefers the OpenJDK on Linux systems.

NiCE should work out-of-the-box with no problems if the following third party libraries are installed to their default locations. See the "tips and tricks" section for dealing with custom install locations.

Sample Data

If you want to download some sample data to play around with different features of NiCE, it is available here.

VisIt

VisIt is an optional requirement for those who want to use the Reactor Analysis Tool, which requires VisIt 2.5.2. Download the appropriate version of VisIt for your machine and extract it to a folder called "visit" in your home directory. VisIt should be run at least once before using NiCE to make sure it works on your system.

HDF5

HDF5 is required if you intend to use the NiCE ReactorAnalysis tools. If you will not be using the ReactorAnalysis tools, installing HDF5 is not required. You will need both HDFView and the binaries. As of the latest release, these are installed together. Make sure that you install the proper versions of both for your architecture. The HDF5 Java and C libraries must be on your path.

3D Graphics

NiCE also requires that your system has 3D rendering enabled to edit geometries, which is normally done by installing the 3d graphics drivers from the vendor of your graphics card. You should consult your IT specialist if you do not know how to enable this on your own.

Please note that some of the above packages may be optional for running the binary version of NiCE, but if you are one of the brave souls trying to build NiCE from scratch all of the above packages are required.

Downloading NiCE

Binary distributions of NiCE are available in the "releases" folder of the NiCE Sourceforge page, which is also depicted in the thumbnail image to the right. The latest stable version of NiCE is version 2.1.5. The binary distribution is a fully-functional, full-featured, executable version of NiCE that includes everything except for the Java Virtual Machine, VisIt and plug-ins currently in development.

The "files" folder contains several subfolders and extra files. You should select the appropriate file named NiCE2.x.y-*.zip where the * is the correct operating system and processor architecture for your system and x and y are major and minor version numbers. The choices are as follows:

• NiCE2.x.y-win32.win32.x86_64.zip - NiCE for 64bit versions of Windows, including Windows 7.
• NiCE2.x.y-win32.win32.x86.zip - NiCE for 32bit versions of Windows, including most installs of Windows XP.
• NiCE2.x.y-macosx.cocoa.x86_64.zip - NiCE for 64bit Mac, including OS/X.
• NiCE2.x.y-macos.cocoa.x86.zip - NiCE for 32bit Mac.
• NiCE2.x.y-linux.gtk.x86_64.zip - NiCE for 64bit Linux running GTK. (Most flavors of Linux.)
• NiCE2.x.y-linux.gtk.x86.zip - NiCE for 32bit Linux running GTK. (Most 32bit installs of Linux.)

On a 64bit installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL6), the nice.product-linux.gtk.x86_64 version of NiCE is the appropriate choice. For Windows 7, nice.product-win32.win32.x86_64.zip should be selected.

Nightly builds of NiCE are available under the "nightly" directory and specific releases up to and including the latest stable releases are available in the "releases" folder.

Running NiCE

Once you download the appropriate zip file for your computer, unzip it to a directory of your choice. No additional installation steps are required because NiCE is executed directly from this directory.

On a Mac you might get a message that says that NiCE is from an unidentified developer and can not be opened. You can simple right-click the executable, click "Open" in the menu that appears and then click "OK" when prompted again.

On Windows, navigate to the folder where you installed NiCE and in the NiCE folder, double-click NiCE.exe. On Linux and Mac systems, you may follow the same procedure, but the NiCE executable is only called "NiCE" on those systems. Alternatively for Linux and Mac systems you may execute NiCE from the shell.

NiCE will open a console that displays debug information and allows for expert debugging in addition to the user interface for your interactions. You may safely ignore this window while you are working.

What do I do if NiCE fails to run?

If NiCE fails to run, you should send an email to billingsjj <at> ornl <dot> gov. If you believe that you have identified a bug, please report it to our bug tracker.

Install Problems: Tips & Tricks

The following tips are all about modifying the NiCE.ini file to invoke special behavior. There is one very important thing to keep in mind about the INI files on Windows: make sure you put your new "-D" options on their own line!

VisIt

The VisIt binary executable path should point to the directory that contains visit/visit.exe if it is not on the system path. This can be configured in the NiCE.ini file using something like: -Dvisit.binpath=C:\Program Files\LLNL\VisIt 2.5.2

The NiCE Development Team prefers to install VisIt in a system location and then use symbolic links to our home directories, as such:

• On Linux from /home/yourUsername, "ln -s visit-2.5.2/ visit"
• On Mac from /Users/yourUsername, "ln -s /Applications/VisIt.app/Contents/Resources/ visit"

HDF5

On Linux machines it is not sufficient to add the HDF5 and HDFView libraries to your ld.so.config file. They must be added to your "LD_LIBRARY_PATH" variable. If you do not know how to do this, you can run the following script from your home directory and replace <path_to_hdfview-libs> and <path-to-hdf5-libs> to your library directories for those packages as appropriate. The first part of this script backs up your current configuration and the second part appends the necessary variables to your .bashrc file.

cp .bashrc .bashrc.backup
echo "LD_LIBRARY_PATH"=<path_to_hdfview-libs>:<path-to-hdf5-libs>:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH 
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

If your HDF5 libraries are stored in /opt/hdf5 and your hdfview libraries are in your home directory this would look like

cp .bashrc .bashrc.backup 
echo "LD_LIBRARY_PATH"=$HOME/hdfview/lib/linux:/opt/hdf5/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH 
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH

If you make a mistake, you can restore your old .bashrc by replacing .bashrc with .bashrc.backup that was created by the script.

In addition to this, you may need to add these files in your ld.so.conf file. Speak to your system administrator if you do not know how to do this.

The location of the HDFView package can also be specified with the java.library.path option in the NiCE.ini file, although this may prevent access to other system libraries. For example: -Djava.library.path=C:\Users\My Username\hdfview\lib\win -Djava.library.path=/home/myUsername/hdfview/lib/linux

Some Windows configurations, particularly those where HDFView is installed in user land, may fail to load the hdf-java DLL files in hdfview\lib\win even if they can be found. In some cases NiCE will throw a Java exception that says "UnsatisfiedLinkError: Access is denied." This can be fixed by granting the HDFView libraries 'Full Control' access rights for your user, as show below, by right-clicking on the DLL and selecting "Properties." This should be done for both jhdf5.dll and jhdf.dll.