Can a Matlab script launch a program on my computer?

The heading says it all. I want to launch a program (Mechanical APDL) that is installed on my computer from Matlab within a script. Is there a convenient way to do this with Matlab?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

system() with a character vector that is a command line. https://www.padtinc.com/blog/starting-ansys-products-from-the-command-line/

[Jóhann Egholm Vørmadal]

Ah thanks, i really appreciate that. The link was brilliant.

This is what i ended up using:

com=['"MAPDL.exe"  -g -p aa_t_i -smp -np 2 -lch -dir "' 
    directory 
    '" -j "Run_Optimization" -s read -l en-us -aas -t -d win32 &'];
system(com)

where the variable 'directory' is the absolute path of the apdl working directory.

For an ordinary installation of MAPDL the absolute path must be used in front of 'MAPDL.exe'

What i did to avoid this was to set its path as an environment variable on my system.