Thank you for the response. I ran the Ansys innovation courses file you suggested and ran into a similar problem. I generated the same error message.
"The optimization solution run was terminated. check the solver output on the solution information object for possible causes"
Association: Project>Model>Topoogy Optimization>Solution
It gave me an topo.err file, but nothing was in it. It also gave me a solve.out file that says the following.
*** FATAL ***
Attempt to run ANSYS in a distributed mode failed.
The Distributed ANSYS process with MPI Rank ID = 1 is not responding.
Please refer to the Distributed ANSYS Guide for detailed setup and configuration information.
The only thing that I could not do was to make sure to turn on "level set method topology optimization" as it was not in my options.
The file that I'm trying to recreat is in the following video as it is for my class. ANSYS 18.1 Topology Optimization - YouTube
You are navigating away from the AIS Discovery experience