Autodesk Simulation Mechanical and Multiphysics

[#1]

Hello,

I have written a MatLab program for reading results files (text files) of FE-models, calculating e.g. the stress amplitude between several time-steps (I did not find any way to do this Algor) or use different fatigue criteria and then visualize the results in a 3D-plot. It works well, but there is one major drawback; writing the results files for big models take an incredible amount of time.

For example, I did this with a model of 670 000 nodes, yesterday. Just opening the "inquire results" window took me 40 minutes and writing the .csv-file itself took another 40 minutes. And if I have to do this for several time-steps, it becomes very time-consuming. I assume that if there was a way to access the results files for the Design Scenario and use a script (Python, perhaps?) to write e.g. the first principal stress value for all the nodes of a certain part at a certain time, this would take a lot less time (since I would not have to use the GUI which have to read all the results as soon as I open the Inquire-window).

Has anyone done anything similar to this, and can give me some pointers? The results must be stored somewhere, somehow....

Regards
Björn

[#2]

Bjorn,

All releases of Algor up to version 2010 provided an Algor API guide. The latest guide was released with version 23.1 software and is attached for your reference. One can use a programming language such as VB, VBA, C, C++, FORTRAN and any other code to extract results either using the results browser component or by directly reading the result files. Since this documentation is no longer provided with the Autodesk Algor 2010 or 2011 products, one cannot guarantee compatibility with all versions of Algor.

Pat Tessaro, P.E.
Autodesk Inc.

[#3]

Thank you. I am sure this will be very helpful.

Regards
Björn

[#4]

ALGOR simulation has internal tools to convert node based and element based result to text files, and any script can read the text file for script.  However, the internal tools are not in the RTM release.

As example, ALGOR's test automation script reads result binaries for thousand of models and compares the result to detect regression.

[#5]

Hi Pat;

Can you please elaborate on why this API manual is not provided with new Algor releases?

Is this a step backward in terms of capabilities? Because scripting is really one of the key features which separates higher end products from lower end ones.

Regards...

Can