Requirements and Configuration

Philip Delff

October 28, 2025 using NMsim 0.2.5.908

Objectives

This vignettes aims at enabling you to

• Understand requirements for using NMsim

• Configure NMsim to use PSN or methods provided by NMsim to update Nonmem control stream initial values and to run Nonmem

• Understand pros and cons of using PSN vs. methods provided by NMsim.

• Configure NMsim to store results in desired locations and separate storage of temporary files and storage of selected and efficiently stored key result data.

Requirements

NMsim itself and many features will work in any newer R installation. For a seamless simulation experience within R, Nonmem installations on linux, Windows and Mac are supported. Multi-threaded execution may currently not work on Windows.

NMsim relies on Nonmem for running simulations. For a fully seamless simulation experience within R, NMsim must be able to execute Nonmem. The simplest example where this is easily achieved, is when R and Nonmem run on the same system. If they are on separate systems, the questions are: Do R and Nonmem share access to a data structure where the relevant files can be stored and executed? And can R login to that other system to run Nonmem, for instance through SSH? In case these two criteria are met, the fully seamless experience should still be possible.

If your system does not meet these requirements, it does not mean that NMsim can’t work. It can still put together your Nonmem simulation control streams and data and make everything ready for Nonmem to execute. Once you have run Nonmem, you can then use NMsim::NMreadSim() to collect the results.

Configuration of NMsim

Below this section, some background discussion is provided to understand which methods to choose. No matter what you prefer to use, the best is to set up NMsim to be able to use both Nonmem and (if available) PSN. Then you have the flexibility to switch between methods as preferred.

Specify the Nonmem paths

For NMsim to run Nonmem, it needs to know where to find the Nonmem executable. This step is recommended.

The easiest way to configure this is through NMdata’s configuration function. Say you want to run Nonmem with /opt/NONMEM/nm75/run/nmfe, insert this after loading NMdata in the beginning of your script

NMdataConf(path.nonmem="/opt/NONMEM/nm75/run/nmfe75")

On Windows, the executable has a .bat extension. The path could look be

NMdataConf(path.nonmem ="C:/nm75g64/run/nmfe75.bat")

If you normally use PSN as your Nonmem interface, and you do not know where Nonmem is installed, you can check this using PSN. The following command should give you the Nonmem installation paths that PSN is configured with. However, you likely still need to add the last piece of the path from the installation directory to the nonmem binary.

psn -nm_versions

If you need to execute scripts on systems with different Nonmem installation paths, you can select between a prioritized set of paths like this, taking the first one found:

paths.nm <- c("/opt/NONMEM/nm75/run/nmfe75",
              "/opt/nonmem/nm751/run/nmfe75",
              "C:/nm75g64/run/nmfe75.bat")
path.nonmem <- paths.nm[min(which(file.exists(paths.nm)))]

NMdataConf(path.nonmem=path.nonmem)

Specify the PSN installation path

If PSN is available, and you can run execute and update_inits in a terminal, you don’t need to configure how NMsim finds PSN. If you have PSN installed, but you have to provide the paths to those two executables when running them (something like /opt/PSN/execute run1.mod), you will have to tell NMsim where to find them. In this case, the easiest is loading NMdata and then running:

NMdataConf(dir.psn="/opt/PSN")

Notice dir.psn refers to a directory while path.nonmem refers to a file.

Test NMsim Configuration

Whether NMsim finds Nonmem after the configuration steps above can be checked by running NMsimTestConf(). Look for $path.nonmem (where NMsim is looking for the executable), $exists.path.nonmem (whether the executable is found), and $method.execute (which method is selected - “nmsim” is prefered).

Configure the directories NMsim writes to

NMsim creates two main directories for its output.

dir.sims

• simulation control streams and other data created by NMsim

• output written by Nonmem

• By far, the largest directory

These files are not necessarily needed for further storage.

dir.res

Selected and efficiently stored simulation output data.

• _paths.rds which contains an index table for `NMreadSim()1. It does not contain any simulated data and is of insignificant size.

• .fst is the full simulation output data set. NMreadSim() will automatically create this file the first time it reads _paths.rds. The user does not need to know about the fst format as they will keep reading the simulation results via NMreadSim() on _paths.rds.

You must make sure to preserve this directory in case you will need to re-analyze or further analyze the simulation output without re-running the simulations.

Additional configuration options

Choosing Nonmem execution method

NMsim can call Nonmem using PSN’s execute or through similar functionality included in NMsim. We will refer to those methods by the way they are referred to in the NMsim() function argument that controls which one is used, i.e. method.execute="psn" and method.execute="nmsim". While PSN users will be familiar with what PSN’s execute does, method.execute="nmsim" needs a few words of explanation. It is essentially an R-based method similar to PSN’s execute, meaning it creates a temporary folder containing necessary files for running Nonmem, then runs nmfe (as specified using path.nonmem) and then copies the desired result files back to the location of the input control stream. NMsim can control the behavior of this function better than it can PSN’s execute which enables NMsim to do additional things with method.execute="nmsim".

For simulations, method.execute="psn" does not provide advantages over method.execute="nmsim". In contrast, there are simulation types that will only work with method.execute="nmsim". You need to tell NMsim where to find Nonmem (by setting path.nonmem) for this to work.

Choosing method for updating initial values

NMsim needs to update initial values using the model estimate prior to running a simulation.

PSN provides the update_inits function to do this. We refer to this by how it is enabled in NMsim, inits=list(method="psn").

NMsim also provides a similar functionality internally, referred to as inits=list(method="NMsim"). This is the default method and comes with advanced features such as conservation of structure and comments of parameter sections, and a fully featured interface to specify values and features such as “fix” or limits of parameters.

inits=list(method="psn") may be prefered by users who are familiar with PSN. inits=list(method="psn") has additional features, and no known down-sides.

In order to make use of inits=list(method="psn"), you need to make sure NMsim can find PSN. If you want to use inits=list(method="NMsim") you don’t need to do anything.

Note on file name extensions

The following requirements to file name and their contents concerns the “input model”. It does not concern files generated by NMsim.

There is no requirement to the file name extension of the input control stream. The input control stream can have any extension (e.g., .ctl or .txt). However, NMsim documentation and file.mod - the important argument to NMsim() and other functions - refer to input control streams by the PSN inspired .mod extension.

The estimate files (.ext, .phi if known subjects simulated, .cov if simulating parameters from the covariance step) are by default expected to carry the same file name but with those file name extension. See arguments like file.ext and file.phi to specify other paths. Currently, the default behavior cannot be customized and the two arguments will have to be provided at each NMsim() call to the extend relevant for the simulation.

Output table files from input model may be needed. This is the case using NMsim_known on models estimated using Bayesian $ESTIMATION methods like SAEM and/or $IMP. In this case NMsim will need to find all the ETA values for all subjects, even if spread across the output tables. This is because these estimation methods leave PHI instead of ETA in the .phi file. For emperical Bayes estimates, NMsim needs the ETAs.

There are no limitations to the file names of the output tables.