Help with Workflow

[AndyWalker]

Hello everyone, please help if you can.

I have a few questions.

1)      When you re-mesh a model in MES with a remote load do I need to delete the remote load part and all of the loads and constraints on it and create it from scratch or is there a way to re-associate the beams with the surface again?

2)      When creating surface / bonding contact should this be done before or after the mesh. If I remesh does it need to be redone. Why do some show up highlighted blue in the tree and some look black?

3)      Here is my worklow can someone confirm the order is correct, Can you notice any mistakes in the order?

a)      Model in Fusion, export to sim mech, set analysis to MES

b)      Set element types to brick

c)       Set material to Steel

d)      Set Default contact to “Free”

e)      Mesh Model

f)       Set up contact faces, Surface and bonded.

g)      Create remote load in a new part, and add nodal moments and constraints.

h)      Define new parts element type as beam

i)        Define Element definition and pick a member size.

j)        Define material as steel.

k)      Run

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Kind Regards

Andy Walker

[AstroJohnPE]

Hi Andy. Here are some answers.

1) Yes if you are using a version older than 2014, No if you are using version 2014. (See the "What's New" available somewhere under autodesk.com for all of the good features.)

2) There are a few situations where you need to specify the contact type before meshing, but most can be done either before or after meshing. It would be better to get into the habit of setting the contact before meshing.

You do not need to re-define the contact after you remesh.

The blue and black entries distinguish between contacts that you define versus automatic contacts the software defines. You can decipher which is which based on what you did or by reading the documentation. (I think it's in there.)

3) Most of the time, the work flow does not affect the final model. As I like to say, "how you get to the finished model doesn't matter as long as it is setup correctly". The workflow only affects the efficiency of the model building. 

For example, steps b) and c) are done automatically when you mesh the model if you have defined the parts to be steel in Fusion. No need to do those manually.

The only possible problem that I see is you set the default contact type to Free before meshing, and then defined Bonded contact after meshing. When the contact type is Free, the mesher knows that it does not need to match the contacting faces (although it often works out to be a matched mesh). If the meshes do not match, bonded contact in MES will have no effect. In other words, bonded contact in MES requires the meshes to match.

[AndyWalker]

Thanks very much for your help, that all makes sense!

Got some much more stable models now!