There is no special setup to do. You start the render and that's pretty much about it.
I guess you don't have any experience with so here's a summary of how it works.
You start by saving your scene with all the parameters properly adjusted (you can change the render options within the command prompt but for this example lets not do it).
You have to write a file that the command will read. This file is a text file. When you save it, change the extension to .bat. After that, if you want to edit it, right-click on it and choose Edit instead of Open. You can place this file wherever you want, but personally I prefer to place it on the drive root (C:). Much simpler.
In the file, you write this:
soft -R nameofthescene.dsc -d nameofthedatabasewherethesceneis -D nameofthedatabasewhereyouwanttherenderedfiles -j
That's it. When you write the database names, you don't to write the path, just the name (Softimage already know the path). So the bat file could look like this:
soft -R myscene.dsc -d mystupid_db -D mysmart_db -j
-R = start Softimage without GUI
-d = input database
-D = output database
-j = skip existing frames
If you have more than one scene, just put them one after each other:
soft -R myscene1.dsc -d mydatabase -D mydatabase -j
soft -R myscene2.dsc -d mydatabase -D mydatabase -j
Now, when you start the command prompt, just go in the folder where the .bat file is (if you putted it in the drive root, just type cd and that's it). Then type the file name with the extension and that's it.
For network rendering it involves more work, so I won't go in this right now.
Hope this helps
Salutations - Cheers
Bernard Lebel