Integrate stand alone ChiSurf Windows installation with Conda

In case you need an additional conda or python package from within the ChiSurf environment, you can integrate ChiSurf into you existing system conda installation.

For that you will need have write permissions on you ChiSurf installation folder. By default your Windows user won’t have write permissions. To change the permissions, select the properties of your installation folder and add writing or full control to the files contained in the ChiSurf installation folder.

Next, create a symlink between your Conda/Miniconda installation and your ChiSurf installation. In this example Miniconda is installed in the folder “C:\Miniconda3”. Here, we create a link between the environment folder of the Miniconda installation and ChiSurf.

mklink /J c:\Miniconda3\envs\chisurf_env_name "C:\Program Files (x86)\ChiSurf\Anaconda"

Now, in a CMD prompt with an activated Miniconda environment the ChiSurf environment can be activated and new packages can be installed. In this example SymPy is installed.

conda activate chisurf_env_name
conda install sympy

Now, Sympy can be used from within ChiSurf