This file details the steps to be followed by Mac users in order to install OpenTOPAS and launch your first simulation.
Warning
We recommend macOS version 14.0 (Sonoma) or higher. Furthermore these instructions are only compatible with qt@5 (see the warnings in Step 6 to ensure that qt@6 is not installed on your system). We take no responsibility for users who wish to proceed with qt@6 already installed on their system.
Note
Steps 1-3 are used to prepare your system for installation of OpenTOPAS. Run these steps from a "terminal" window (found in the Utilities subfolder of the Applications folder on your system) when logged in as a user with administrative privileges (a so-called super user or su).
Tip
You can skip steps 1 and 2 if your system has XCode and Homebrew. You can check for this by entering the command which xcode-select for XCode and which brew for Homebrew. If the command is available the system will respond, showing you where it is installed on your system.
Download XCode, which can be found on the Mac App Store, then enter the following command to install xcode-select (you can copy commands from here and paste them to your terminal):
sudo xcode-select --install
Install Homebrew. Access the Homebrew website given in Step 2 from your web browser then copy and paste the installation command provided near the top of the website page into your terminal; e.g.:
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
Follow the instructions posted to your terminal at the end of the Homebrew installation; e.g., enter the following commands:
(echo; echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"') >> $HOME/.zprofile
eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"
Once Homebrew is installed, you will have access to the command brew install. Use this command to install qt@5, git, wget, and cmake by entering the following commands into your terminal:
brew install qt@5
brew install git
brew install wget
brew install cmake
Note
Steps 4-6 are used to install Geant4, the Monte Carlo toolkit that provides the radiation transport.
If you have not done so already, download Geant4 version 11.1.3 (or 11.1.2).
4.1. For a manual download, go to the Geant4 website, choose your version, scroll down to "Source code", and download the compressed file. Create a directory called GEANT4 in your /Applications directory, move the compressed folder into this directory, and decompress the file. Assuming you downloaded version 11.1.3, you should have the directory /Applications/GEANT4/geant4-v11.1.3
4.2. Alternatively, download Geant4 from the terminal as follows:
mkdir /Applications/GEANT4
cd /Applications/GEANT4
wget https://gitlab.cern.ch/geant4/geant4/-/archive/v11.1.3/geant4-v11.1.3.tar.gz
tar zxf geant4-v11.1.3.tar.gz
If you have not done so already, download the Geant4 data files which correspond to your version of Geant4.
5.1. First create the G4DATA directory which will house the data files:
cd /Applications/GEANT4/
mkdir G4DATA
5.2. Next, download the data files which correspond to your version of Geant4. The datasets for the latest Geant4 release may be donwloaded from (https://geant4.web.cern.ch/download/all). The datesets for earlier versions of Geant4 can be found by going to the specific webpage for your Geant4 version. On the webpage, scroll down to “Datasets”, and hover over each data set name. For a manual download, get the .tar.gz files from the website, move them into /Applications/GEANT4/G4DATA, and decompress them.
5.3. Alternatively, download the files using the wget command in your terminal; e.g., for Geant4-11.1.3:
cd /Applications/GEANT4/G4DATA/
wget https://cern.ch/geant4-data/datasets/G4NDL.4.7.tar.gz
wget https://cern.ch/geant4-data/datasets/G4EMLOW.8.2.tar.gz
wget https://cern.ch/geant4-data/datasets/G4PhotonEvaporation.5.7.tar.gz
wget https://cern.ch/geant4-data/datasets/G4RadioactiveDecay.5.6.tar.gz
wget https://cern.ch/geant4-data/datasets/G4PARTICLEXS.4.0.tar.gz
wget https://cern.ch/geant4-data/datasets/G4PII.1.3.tar.gz
wget https://cern.ch/geant4-data/datasets/G4RealSurface.2.2.tar.gz
wget https://cern.ch/geant4-data/datasets/G4SAIDDATA.2.0.tar.gz
wget https://cern.ch/geant4-data/datasets/G4ABLA.3.1.tar.gz
wget https://cern.ch/geant4-data/datasets/G4INCL.1.0.tar.gz
wget https://cern.ch/geant4-data/datasets/G4ENSDFSTATE.2.3.tar.gz
wget https://cern.ch/geant4-data/datasets/G4TENDL.1.4.tar.gz
wget ftp://gdo-nuclear.ucllnl.org/LEND_GND1.3/LEND_GND1.3_ENDF.BVII.1.tar.gz
5.4. Decompress them using tar zxf.
tar zxf G4NDL.4.7.tar.gz
tar zxf G4EMLOW.8.2.tar.gz
tar zxf G4PhotonEvaporation.5.7.tar.gz
tar zxf G4RadioactiveDecay.5.6.tar.gz
tar zxf G4PARTICLEXS.4.0.tar.gz
tar zxf G4PII.1.3.tar.gz
tar zxf G4RealSurface.2.2.tar.gz
tar zxf G4SAIDDATA.2.0.tar.gz
tar zxf G4ABLA.3.1.tar.gz
tar zxf G4INCL.1.0.tar.gz
tar zxf G4ENSDFSTATE.2.3.tar.gz
tar zxf G4TENDL.1.4.tar.gz
tar zxf LEND_GND1.3_ENDF.BVII.1.tar.gz
Build Geant4. Take note of the following warnings before running the commands shown in step 6.2:
Warning
Geant4 requires a minimum CMake version (between 3.16 and 3.243). Check your version of CMake as follows:
cmake --version
Warning
Verify that qt@6 is not linked or installed in your system. The following command should yield no output if qt@6 is indeed NOT installed on your system. See the warning at the top of the document about qt@6 compatibility.
brew list --versions qt@6
Warning
Depending on your MacOS version you may or may not have XQuartz installed on your system. This can be tested with the following command which should yield no output if it is NOT installed. If this is the case please head to the official Xquartz website to download the application.
which xquartz
Warning
Those with M1, M2 or M3 chips (check by going to the apple logo on the upper left of your screen and clicking on “About this Mac”) have arm64 architecture and should include this architecture in the DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES option of the cmake command in step 6.2 below. Those with Intel chips should not include this command and can delete the last line of the cmake command.
6.1. Check which version of qt@5 you have installed on your system as well as the associated installation path with the following command.
readlink -f $(brew --prefix qt@5)
Replace the path supplied to DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH in step 6.2 with the output of the above command.
6.2. Run the following commands:
cd /Applications/GEANT4/
mkdir geant4-{build,install}
cd geant4-build
cmake ../geant4-v11.1.3 -DGEANT4_INSTALL_DATA=OFF \
-DGEANT4_BUILD_MULTITHREADED=ON \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../geant4-install \
-DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/opt/homebrew/Cellar/qt@5/5.15.11 \
-DGEANT4_USE_QT=ON -DGEANT4_USE_OPENGL_X11=ON \
-DGEANT4_USE_RAYTRACER_X11=ON \
-DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES=arm64
make -j20 install
Note
The remaining steps complete the download and installation of OpenTOPAS and start you on the road to successful simulations.
Downloading and installing OpenTOPAS and GDCM.
7.1. First get OpenTOPAS from the GitHub repository.
mkdir -p /Applications/TOPAS
cd /Applications/TOPAS
git clone https://github.com/OpenTOPAS/OpenTOPAS.git
7.2. Next, check if the /Applications/GDCM already exists (GDCM is already installed). If so, rename the directory to GDCM-OLD (or another name) using the following command.
mv /Applications/GDCM /Applications/GDCM-OLD
Then use the following commands to move GDCM(gdcm-2.6.8.tar.gz) from the OpenTOPAS source code folder to its own directory and decompress it.
mkdir /Applications/GDCM
cd /Applications/TOPAS/OpenTOPAS
mv gdcm-2.6.8.tar.gz ../../GDCM
cd ../../GDCM
tar zxf gdcm-2.6.8.tar.gz
7.3. Build GDCM with the following commands:
mkdir gdcm-{build,install}
cd gdcm-build
cmake ../gdcm-2.6.8 -DGDCM_BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON \
-DGDCM_BUILD_DOCBOOK_MANPAGES:BOOL=OFF \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../gdcm-install \
-DCMAKE_INSTALL_RPATH=@loader_path \
-DCMAKE_MACOSX_RPATH=ON
make -j20 install
7.4. With GDCM built and installed, you can continue with the OpenTOPAS installation:
cd /Applications/TOPAS
mkdir OpenTOPAS-{build,install}
cd OpenTOPAS-build
export Geant4_DIR=/Applications/GEANT4/geant4-install \
GDCM_DIR=/Applications/GDCM/gdcm-install/
cmake ../OpenTOPAS -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=../OpenTOPAS-install
make -j20 install
Setup the environment.
8.1. This can be done manually as follows, however it needs to be repeated each time you open a new terminal window.
export QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH=/Applications/TOPAS/OpenTOPAS-install/Frameworks
export TOPAS_G4_DATA_DIR=/Applications/GEANT4/G4DATA
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Applications/TOPAS/OpenTOPAS-install/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Applications/GEANT4/geant4-install/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH
8.2.1. Alternatively, you can automate setting up the environment. We recommend adding all the exports into a dedicated shell script folder as follows:
mkdir ~/shellScripts
cd ~/shellScripts
touch topas
echo 'export QT_QPA_PLATFORM_PLUGIN_PATH=/Applications/TOPAS/OpenTOPAS-install/Frameworks' >> topas
echo 'export TOPAS_G4_DATA_DIR=/Applications/GEANT4/G4DATA' >> topas
echo 'export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Applications/TOPAS/OpenTOPAS-install/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH' >> topas
echo 'export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/Applications/GEANT4/geant4-install/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH' >> topas
echo '/Applications/TOPAS/OpenTOPAS-install/bin/topas $1' >> topas
chmod +x topas
8.2.2 After the OpenTOPAS shell script folder has been created as outlined above, export the appropriate path in either your ~/.zshrc or ~/.bash_profile file. You can find out which shell you are using by typing echo $SHELL in your terminal. For zsh:
cd ~
echo 'export PATH=~/shellScripts:$PATH' >> .zshrc
And for bash:
cd ~
echo 'export PATH=~/shellScripts:$PATH' >> .bash_profile
Running your first OpenTOPAS simulation.
9.1. For those that decided to set the environment up manually, as described in Step 8.1, OpenTOPAS can now be run by accessing the executable located in /Applications/TOPAS/OpenTOPAS-install/bin/topas. For example, to run the simple OpenTOPAS example of dose being scored inside a water phantom:
cd /Applications/TOPAS/OpenTOPAS-install/examples/Scoring
../../bin/topas Dose.txt
9.2. For those that decided to automate the process as described in Step 8.2 onwards, OpenTOPAS can now be run with the topas command in your terminal without having to setup the environment variables:
topas Dose.txt
Tip
If you require assistance with any of your OpenTOPAS simulations, don't hesitate to request help from the developers and other users on the Discussions tab of the OpenTOPAS GitHub page.
As an additional step for those interested in running quality checks, the continuous integration test suite for OpenTOPAS can be used. Python and pip3 will be needed.
Warning
We recommend that installation be performed using Homebrew to avoid messing with your system Python. The following command installs Python 3.x and pip3 is installed automatically.
brew install python
The OpenTOPAS tests are located in the “tests” folder of the OpenTOPAS source code directory, and testing is performed using nrtest and the OpenTOPAS-specific plugins contained in nrtest-topas:
cd /Applications/TOPAS/OpenTOPAS
pip3 install nrtest
pip3 install git+https://github.com/davidchall/nrtest-topas.git
Modify the apps/topas-HEAD_4.11.1.2.json metadata file according to your directories and configuration (remember to set your environment variables) and execute the entire test suite as follows:
nrtest execute apps/topas-HEAD_4.11.1.2.json tests/ -o benchmark/todayDate
Comparisons can also be made with the following command:
nrtest compare benchmarks/today benchmarks/yesterday