Amateur question- Where are my physical proprties?

[gsuty]

First, a rank amateur using Nastran (obviously).  I can get around Inventor Stress Analysis pretty well, but am struggling with Nastran.  I'm looking to place constraints between the two bodies of my assembly, and cannot find the 'physical properties' in my Analysis tree, or any other way to constrain the two bodies to one another. Any pointers?

[John_Holtz]

Hi @gsuty. Welcome to the Inventor Nastran forum. 

I can get around Nastran pretty well, but I do not know that much about Inventor Stress Analysis (ISA). Between the two of us, we should be able to analyze just about anything. 🙂

I think what you are looking for in Nastran (and ISA) is to define contact between the multiple bodies in your assembly. See this chapter of the Self-Paced Training for a short introduction  Autodesk Inventor Nastran 2026 Help | Section 9: Contact Modeling | Autodesk, and then the chapters that follow (and proceed section 9) for a test model.

At some point, I suggest you look over the PDF document attached to my forum post Suggested Reading - Tips and Tricks. This will help with navigating the Inventor Nastran interface and understanding some of the issues related to the analysis itself.

Regarding "physical properties", is that terminology from ISA, or did you find an old video or documentation that talks about "physical properties" in Inventor Nastran? (I think Physical Properties was the term ten years ago for what is now labeled as Idealizations.)

John

[gsuty]

100% was looking for contact (or joint options- I don't recall) in 'physical properties' after having seen it in an older youtube video.  

Thanks for the reply!  I'll take a look at what you've attached and see if I can't make some forward progress.