Nodal Results on Individual Surfaces

[nathan.alday]

I'm doing an external flow analysis, and need the aerodynamic load distribution on several surfaces.  Is there a way to export nodal results on just those specific surfaces?  I know the entire model can be exported - but with with several million nodes that don't even matter to my calculations, that's a non-starter.

Thanks!

- Nate

[srhusain]

One way to achieve this, at least for vizualization purposes is to turn on the Wall Forces check-box (see image below). When the analysis is done you can then view the wall forces distribution.

Hope this helps a bit.

[hartogj]

Hi Nate

Others might chime in with suggestions, but here is something you can try if you have to get nodal results on specific surfaces.

1) assign a scalar BC to any surfaces of interest. Use different values on each surface if you want to track them differently.

2) run the model (either run from scratch or run for 0 iterations starting at the end of a prior run)

3) export nodal results

4) in a spreadsheet, filter out the results by the scalar value. for example, if you assigned scalar BC = 1, drill down to just the nodes with scalar = 1.

Jon

[nathan.alday]

I appreciate the work-around suggestions - thanks.

I like the scalar BC condition approach - but I have well over a million nodes, and am afraid Excel would explode if I ever tried to open a file that big.

I've have been using wall forces on surfaces - which gives me forces and CPs - but not a distribution.  I've tried splitting the model into a bunch of surfaces to approximate a load distribution, but it's a crude way to do it.

It seems like, for anyone doing any kind of manual transfer of loads, being able to export nodal results on specific surfaces would be a powerful tool in the software.  Maybe something for Autodesk to consider for future releases?

Thanks again,

- Nate