RuntimeError: Distributed geometry.x_aero_in requires an IndepVarComp

[Aming12-01]

Hi, I’m running an aerostructural optimization with ADflow, TACS and I get this error during prob.setup():
RuntimeError: Distributed component input "geometry.x_aero_in" requires an IndepVarComp.
I'm using:
points = self.mesh_aero.mphys_get_surface_mesh()
self.geometry.nom_add_discipline_coords("aero", points)
But I still get the error. I also tried manually connecting:
self.connect("mesh_aero.coordinates", "geometry.x_aero_in")
but that didn't solve it either — it triggers the same distributed input error.

This same workflow works in my aerodynamic-only optimization script (which uses mesh.x_aero0 → geometry.x_aero_in), so I suspect the issue is that coordinates is distributed in this case.

Any idea how to properly connect the ADflow mesh to OM_DVGEOCOMP in a distributed setting?

Thanks!