Best Practice - FEA Methodology

[sushi75]

Hi Everybody,

I've been working now for a few months on FEA, and what I found sometimes difficult on top of the analysis itself is the way I organise the files and the work.

It's usually required to modify the design, or the mesh, try different load cases, or analysis type etc etc. So from a basic topic, it's fairly easy to slighly end up with a bit of a messy work file where I can be difficult to retrieve information.

So I was wondering if experienced people have some best practice rules or tips to make the work more organised?
I'm always careful to get consistent file names, folders, but at one point I can be overloaded with files, and it reduces the efficiency and look less professional.

Hope I can improve my work with your help!

Thanks a lot!

 

[rb1957]

i hear your pain brother. particularly having several projects on the go at any time, means dropping one, picking it up again, remembering what I did last (did I make "that" change ? I know I meant to ... which output set is this loadcase ? ...)

having experienced the pain of being disorganised, you learn the value of being organised.

try to keep your files organised, whatever that means to you. filenames, folders, whatever works for you.

when you have to drop a project, take the time to extract yourself from the analysis ... an "exvil" plan. write notes about what you did last, what you were planning to do next.

recognise, that no matter how detailed your notes, you'll usually miss something ! revel in your failures !!

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[GregLocock]

At least one part of that is solved by the home grown software I use. It insists that each run filename has a different letter terminator. This has the bad news that I can only do 26 runs in a folder. Typically my experiments are planned ahead of time, so I keep my wiki open and describe each run before I prepare it.



Cheers

Greg Locock


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[IceBreakerSours]

I try hard to get rid of crap runs, old jobs, etc. and just leave the key jobs with a ReadMe.txt in each directory, particularly when I am sharing anything. Even if I do not do that, I am sure to name the directories and files carefully so when I go back to find something, the naming makes the task real easy. I always *try* to create notes in OneNote; still need to put more heart into it.

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[gravityandinertia]

My advice is even if a report isn't needed, make one. Have two monitors, in one keep a word document of the report open, in the other the analysis tool you are using. Before each run, write it down in a section of what changes were made and what this particular run is meant to show. After each run solves, make sure it is saved under a new name and is some how connected to that name in the report. This makes it very easy to remember what was done and why. It also has the added benefit of showing your thought process and allowing you to see inefficiencies that you can do better on in the future. Also a good tool to show new hires how things are thought through.

 

[rstupplebeen]

Under the project name I create a folder named FEA which houses all the inputs, outputs etc I also create a CAD folder and others as well. I agree with gravityandinertia to keep a document open and take notes real time. I personally use PowerPoints because just about every useful simulation gets presented at some point. I incrementally name each file appending with today's date 031616 and further append with a letter if I want multiple copies for a single day. This lets me trace what PowerPoint file and simulations align.

I'm typically using Abaqus/CAE which inside a single CAE file there can be multiple models. For example if the project is called 'bounce' the CAE file would be bounce031616.cae. Inside the CAE file the model would be named bounce01 and the job name would be bounce01. I keep create a new model by copying and increment the number as I go.

When I'm all done with a project I typically clean up all of the files except for the last CAE file because it can be used to create all of the other files if they ever need to be rerun. I have a script that searches and deletes all of Abaqus's temporary files but I usually just sort by file type and delete by hand. Depending on the consulting arrangement for a project I may keep more or less materials.

I hope this helps.
Rob

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