Installation Guide
Tecplot 360 2024 Release 1

Welcome to Tecplot 360! This guide contains instructions to help you successfully install Tecplot 360 and enter your licenses. To complete the installation process, a basic understanding of file editing, folder navigation, path names, environment variables, and shortcuts/aliases is useful.

The Tecplot 360 installation is available primarily as a download. Download the setup file corresponding to your operating system from My Tecplot to begin. If you have difficulty downloading the installation file, contact Technical Support for help.

Tecplot 360 uses the Reprise License Manager to manage licensed use of the product. The first time you run Tecplot 360 after a fresh installation, you must provide an activation key or valid license file (for a Single-User license), or the address of a Reprise License Manager server (for a Network license).

If you have a Network license of Tecplot 360, one machine on your network will need to have the Reprise License Manager server installed. Refer to the RLM Installation Guide for instructions on installing and configuring the Reprise License Manager server for a Network license.

My Tecplot is Tecplot’s one-stop portal that allows you to download software, manage your license keys, and more. Visit it at my.tecplot.com.

If you have difficulty performing the installation, review the Useful Information, then visit our detailed, searchable knowledge base online at kb.tecplot.com. You can also contact our responsive Technical Support Team by the following methods:

Please include your license number when contacting Support.

If you need to obtain a license file for Tecplot 360, you will need your license number. This number identifies you as a Tecplot customer and is different from the activation code or license key file you receive to activate a single-user license. If you do not have a license number, this may be because someone else in your organization purchased the license. If you purchased a single-user license or are the listed contact on your account, Technical Support can help you find your license number.

We recommend, at a minimum:

If you work with larger data sets, more RAM, more disk space, and additional processor cores will help.

Please make sure that you are using the latest graphics drivers compatible with your hardware and operating system. These can be obtained from your graphics adapter vendor’s Web site. Old versions may have issues with Tecplot 360, especially with larger data sets.

Tecplot 360 is built, tested, and fully supported only on the following operating systems and platforms. The software may also run on operating systems similar to the ones listed here, especially later releases of the same platforms, but our ability to provide support for such installations may be limited.

If there are rendering issues within the plot area, trouble exporting images or a warning is presented on launch, see Troubleshooting Appendix in Tecplot 360 User Manual for more detail. Or for Chorus Troubleshooting Appendix in the Chorus User Manual.

You may run Tecplot 360 from the command line; for example:

You may follow this command with the paths of any Tecplot-format layout, macro, or data files to open. Tecplot 360 will launch and then open the specified files, if any.

However, to run in batch mode, Tecplot requires the full path to the executable followed by the -b flag:

If you often use Tecplot 360 from the command line, it is convenient to add an alias of the full executable path like the following in ~/.bashrc:

With this alias defined, you can open Tecplot 360 from a terminal by typing tec360 followed optionally by the files to be opened.

If you set the file associations for Tecplot-format files as described in the following section, you can open such files from the command line more simply. For example:

This opens the specified file in the default application, Tecplot 360. In this case, the tec360 alias is not needed.

Keyboard shortcuts described in the Tecplot 360 User’s Manual often use the Control key (for example, Ctrl+C to copy text to the clipboard). Mac users should use the Mac-standard Command key for these shortcuts instead.

If a keyboard shortcut calls for the Alt key, use the Option key. Many Macs have the word Alt on the Option key already, but some keyboards may only have Option.

If your mouse has only a single button, hold down Control while clicking to generate a right-click.

Right-click the Tecplot 360 icon in the Mac dock to access a menu that lets you launch an additional instance in its own window. Note that for a network license, each new instance consumes an additional license seat.

To install Tecplot 360 on a Linux system, perform these steps:

The first time you run Tecplot 360 or Tecplot Chorus after a fresh installation, you will be prompted to set up your license. See Licensing for further instructions.

It may be useful to add Tecplot 360 to your PATH variable so you can easily run it from the command line without having to specify the full path to the executable file. To do this:

When invoked as a login shell, Bash looks in these files in your home directory (in order) for initialization commands:

Some systems may not contain a .bash_profile file. If this is the case, you may create the file, or put the Tecplot PATH commands in one of the other files above. Use the syntax already described.

To run Tecplot 360, navigate to the bin folder of the Tecplot 360 installation and type ./tec360. If you have set the PATH variable to include the Tecplot 360 bin folder, as described previously, you do not need to change the directory before typing tec360. In this case, it is often more convenient to change to the directory containing the data files you will be working with before starting Tecplot 360.

If you purchased a Network license, you can run Tecplot 360 remotely using the X Window System. By default, X Window System programs send their output to the display identified by the DISPLAY environment variable.

If you purchased a Single-User license, Tecplot 360 must run and display on the same computer.

If you choose to work remotely with complex geometries on the order of 50M polygons or elements, using the --mesa option will force graphics rendering to occur in software on the computer running Tecplot 360 rather than at the workstation displaying it. This may result in better display performance. At least two clients, VNC and ThinAnywhere, automatically use this option. However, with other clients, like Exceed, Reflection, or Cygwin, you will need to specify the --mesa flag to enable software rendering. This diagram illustrates the difference in where rendering is done during remote access:

The Tecplot SZL Server runs only on 64-bit (Intel x64) Linux systems and is officially supported only on the specific distributions listed under Supported Platforms. However, in practice, the Tecplot SZL Server should run on more distributions than does Tecplot 360 itself, because the server does not have any graphics requirements. We encourage you to try the SZL server even if your Linux distribution is not officially supported by Tecplot 360.

Although the server must run on Linux, the client can be any platform supported by Tecplot 360.

If you require support for a server platform other than Linux, please contact support@tecplot.com.

An installation script for the Tecplot SZL Server, tecplotszlserver_2024r1_linux64.sh, can be found in the szlserver folder in your Tecplot 360 installation. Installing it is similar to installing the Linux version of Tecplot 360.

The installation will take only a moment.

If you are already authenticating to a given remote host via ssh using a key pair, you can reuse OpenSSH-format keys with Tecplot 360 and do not need to generate new ones. These instructions will help you set up ssh authentication via key pairs if you are not already using this feature.

The public key is installed on the remote host, and the private key is installed on the client workstation. This allows the client workstation to prove the user account’s identity to the server without the user entering credentials, allowing Tecplot 360 to connect transparently to the Tecplot SZL Server.

You should take steps to prevent the private key from being accessed by other users of your machine or network, for example using filesystem permissions, because they can use the private key to impersonate the specified user to the remote server. You might add an IP address restriction for the key (in the remote host’s authorized_keys file) if the user workstation has an assigned address.

Creating key pairs can be done on any platform. On Linux and Mac, you can use command-line tools that come with the operating system. On Windows, you will need to install the necessary utilities if you do not already have them.

Since the Tecplot SZL Server runs only on Linux, you already have access to a Linux system which you can use to generate key pairs. However, we have also included instructions for generating the keys on Windows.

See the User’s Manual for information on loading files from the Tecplot SZL Server.

The first time you launch Tecplot 360 after a fresh installation, you will be prompted to enter your license information:

You will also see this dialog if Tecplot 360 cannot validate your license information (for example, because your evaluation license has expired, or because the network license server is not available). Additionally, you may change your license information at any time from the Help menu.

How you install your license information depends on what type of license you have.

To obtain a time-limited evaluation license key so you can try the product before purchasing, make sure the "Evaluation" license type is selected in the Licensing dialog, then click Begin Evaluation. The product evaluation period begins. You will see a notice on the product’s Welcome Screen indicating when your evaluation license will expire.

This procedure requires an active Internet connection. If for some reason you cannot fully evaluate Tecplot 360 on an Internet-connected computer, or if you need additional time to complete your evaluation, contact Tecplot Support for a time-limited single-user license file, which may then be installed using the instructions in the following section.

If you received an activation code for your product, allowing it to be activated over the Internet, follow the instructions below. If you received a license key file, or if the workstation you have installed the product on does not have Internet access, see Single-User License Setup Using A License File.

To activate the product, simply enter or paste your activation code in the field provided. Then click Activate.

The license key corresponding to your activation code is downloaded to your computer, and Tecplot 360 uses that license.

You will need the license file sent to you by Tecplot, Inc. If it was provided to you as an e-mail attachment, please save it to a file on your computer in an easy-to-find location, such as the Desktop.

Tecplot 360 now uses the chosen license.

If your license requires a USB license security key ("dongle"), make sure it is connected to your computer before launching Tecplot 360. It must remain connected while the product is running.

To use a network license, you or your system administrator must first install the Reprise License Manager (RLM) version 11 or newer and the license key for your product on a network server. (See the installation instructions included with the RLM download.) Once this has been accomplished, follow these steps:

Tecplot 360 will now use a license obtained from the license server.

If the product is unable to obtain a license key, an error message will appear, and you should verify that you have specified the correct network license information.

Where can I get help understanding Tecplot 360?

Tecplot 360 includes access to the following manuals, HTML Help, and an online forum to help you explore all of Tecplot 360’s features. Your installation includes these manuals in the doc folder within your installation folder.

What license options do I have?

Three basic license types govern usage of Tecplot 360 on supported platforms: Evaluation licenses, Single-User licenses, and Network licenses. Please see the license agreement, license.html, located inside the installation directory for the definitions of each license type.

How does a network license work?

When you open Tecplot 360 from a local machine on the network, it contacts the license server via TCP/IP and "checks out" a key from the license manager. When you exit the program, Tecplot 360 returns the key. The license manager limits the number of Tecplot 360 sessions currently active to the number of users allowed by the license.

I cannot get my license key to work!

An error message appears if the license configuration file cannot be located, or if it does not contain a valid license key (for a Single-User license) or license server address (for a Network license) from which a valid license can be obtained.

If you have a Network license, obtain the address of the license server you should use. If you have a Single-User license, contact support@tecplot.com to obtain a valid license key file. After obtaining either the address or the license key, install it following the procedure described in Licensing.

How do I get a license key?

The easiest way to activate a single-user license is to use an activation code. Tecplot 360 obtains the actual license key and installs it for you. If this is not possible, you may request a license key file using one of these methods:

Remember to specify your license number and include your Host ID information from myhostids.txt when requesting a license key file. You can find myhostids.txt in your Tecplot 360 installation folder.