Autodiscovery#

PyLumerical requires Lumerical 2022 R1 or later to run. The autodiscovery function first attempts to find the installation location using the following methods:

  1. Environment variable: PyLumerical checks the LUMERICAL_HOME environment variable for the installation path. If found, this path is used.

  2. Windows registry: On Windows, PyLumerical checks the registry for the installation path of Lumerical products.

  3. Default installation paths: If the registry lookup fails, or if you are using Linux, PyLumerical checks the default installation paths:

    • On Windows, with the Lumerical standalone installer: C:\Program Files\Lumerical\

    • On Windows, with the Ansys automated installer: C:\Program Files\Ansys Inc\

    • On Linux, with the Lumerical standalone installer: /opt/lumerical/

    • On Linux, with the Ansys automated installer: ~/Ansys/ansys_inc/

When PyLumerical finds an installation path, it configures the interop path. If bundled lumopt2 is present, PyLumerical enables import lumopt2 and import ansys.lumerical.core.lumopt2 directly without exposing unrelated modules from <install>/api/python.

If PyLumerical can’t find the installation path automatically, it returns a warning. Set LUMERICAL_HOME before import and start a new Python session. Manual sys.path overrides for lumopt2 are unsupported.

The autodiscovery helpers below run automatically when you import PyLumerical:

ansys.lumerical.core.autodiscovery.locate_lumerical_install()

Locate the installation directory and interop library directory for Lumerical software.

ansys.lumerical.core.autodiscovery.get_lumerical_api_python_path(...)

Get the Python API directory for a Lumerical installation.