Shell Elements not meshing

[roy7BB24]

 Hi All. 

I'm having a slight drama getting some parts to mesh. I've created a gate and a truss section in using frame generator. It's a fairly simple construction, I've opted to represent all RHS as shell elements and all plate elements as solid bodies. I'm just using a contact solver for to using offset bonded to create my contacts. The objective of the analysis is to see how the assembly will deflect due to gravity. 

Anyway I've just used "create midsurfaces" on all the RHS members of the assembly, and this appears to work, however when I generate the mesh, some of the rhs shell elements aren't meshing, as shown in picture. 

I actually deleted the entire analysis and started again just to see if it would help, I've just created the mid-surfaces and set the plates as solid bodies, but there's no constraints or loads in the model, but the only problem I'm looking to solve is the parts not meshing. 

Please see below a drop-box link to the pack and go of the model. Any assistance would be much appreciated.

https://www.dropbox.com/t/zFNtrEYucQ3ARr3q

Kind Regards

Roydon Mackay

[John_Holtz · Accepted solution]

Hi @roy7BB24 

The parts that are not meshing have the same name as other parts. Nastran does not recognize these parts when the name is the same. See Parts missing from frame generator model in Nastran (autodesk.com)

I am not sure if Inventor is using the same name by mistake, or if this is new functionality in Inventor that has not made it into Nastran.

John

[roy7BB24]

Hi,

I guess you are correct. As they're frame generated parts the instance name/ part number is Section size - Length. As its a truss all of the inside members were the same length, and thus had the same instance name. I was able to solve the problem by using the Assembly - Productivity - Rename browser nodes to give all the instances different names. That said I'm pretty sure the naming convention I'm using is pretty standard for frame generated parts, and it's very common to have multiple frame members that are the same length in a frame, this doesn't seem like an especially useful feature? 

Just to clarify I am using my own custom sections, but I believe that the standard sections still create the same name if the member is the same length. You should be able to see examples of my naming convention in the snip attached to the original post