Is it possible to extract a deformed mesh?

[Anonymous]

I wish to use the deformed mesh as base for another model. Excluding a restart analysis, is there a possibility to create a new geometric model from the deformed mesh?

Best regards

Björn

[S.LI]

Hi, Björn,

I'm not sure your meaning of "deformed mesh" here.

Does this only mean the change of geometry or also include the effect of residual stress/strain?

You know, sometimes, this could be very complicated in nonlinear analysis.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I'm talking about extracting only the deformed mesh, without any stresses or strains. Hopefully also with the surfaces, edges and so on still defined.

Best regards

Björn

[S.LI]

Got it.

Except for restart, I'm not aware of any other way to do this.

[xli]

Björn,

We don't have a sophisticated way to do so because that is a little bit higher level requests from general autodesk users standard. Particularly when it involves CAD models that you would like to update model geometry from previous results, such operations could be too much to do for now.

However if applying your idea just inside the loop of multiple FEA analysis with same mesh, i.e. keeping same model topology but just updating node's geometry from an analysis to next analysis, it would be doable by hands for advanced users. The basic operation is just using previous analysis's displacements results to update next model's nodal coordinates. If you are knowing of a little bit programing with Algor simulation or you are willing to use some command line utilities and manually running Algor simulations, it will not be that difficult as far as you are not concerning to some further difficult topics such as dealing with local mesh distortions, mesh refinements, or remeshing etc.

-xli

[Anonymous]

Hi, Xli

Thanks for your answer. I don't know much programming language, but I have written quite a few input files for Abaqus and Ansys. Is programming in Algor similar?

Best regards

Björn

[John_Holtz]

Bjorn,

When in the Results environment, use "File > Export > Make Fem". This outputs the deformed mesh to a new model name. Be sure to set the displacement scale to 1 ("Results Options > Displaced Model Options"), assuming you want the actual displacement and not a scaled displacement.

Other types of results can be written to text files. All of these are described in the Help documentation on the page "Autodesk Algor Simulation > Results > Introduction - Results > Results Environment > Exporting Results".

[xli]

Hi, Björn,

You may follow John's method first (as his new response in the group, make a fem file of deformed mesh for your task), that would be easier. I would be glad to help as I can (it may already satisfy you.). best wishes.

-xli

[Anonymous]

Hi, Xli and John

Thanks, I will try this method. Even so, I would be happy if you could share with me an example file as we discussed via e-mail. In all the cases I have tried, I have always preferred using input files (if possible) to a graphical interface when it comes to FE-modelling.

Thanks,

Björn