FEA Post-Processor Development

[ATX3]

Greetings,

I am interested in learning more about how to develop an FEA post-processor. I would like to develop a GUI that is capable of displaying structure geometry, deformations, result contours, etc. I have a decent programming background, but I haven't done much with graphics applications. Any guidance or helpful discussions would be greatly appreciated!

Best Regards,

 

[ESPcomposites]

I can't directly help, but you may want to have a look at CalculiX. It is open source and has a post processor.

http://www.bconverged.com/

Brian

http://www.espcomposites.com

 

[GregLocock]

Far be it from me to question why you want to develop a particular piece of software, but I'd have thought postprocessing is pretty well covered already.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[Composites_FEA_Guru]

Hi ATX,

As Greg mentioned, developing a post-processor might not be worth your time. I think there is more room for improvement on the pre-processor side, especially non graphics intense tools that just do things like convert input files from one solver form to another (Abaqus format to Ansys format or whatever solver you so desire).

Regards,
-Dan

Dan Milligan
Firehole Composites (

http://www.firehole.com)

FHC provides software and consulting for analysis of composite structures.

 

[ATX3]

Hi guys,

Thank you so much for replying to my post. I should have been more specific. I am developing a specialized FEA program tailored for a specific type of dynamic analysis. The deliverable is for a private client and they do not want a 3rd party pre-processor or post-processor to be packaged with their program. Consequently, I am having to develop my own tools. I have the pre-processor and main number crunching processor pretty well handled, but I am struggling with the development of a graphical post-processor. I do not expect to be able to develop something as sophisticated as LS PrePost or Abaqus's visualization module, but I would like to develop something similar (i.e., graphical display capable of showing structure geometry, deformations, stress/strain contours, etc.) Getting a hold of an open source post-processor that I could plug into my FEA program may be one option. Starting from scratch using something like OpenGL may be another option. I was just trying to reach out to the FEA community to see if anyone had any guidance with respect to the above discussion.

Best,

 

[seymours2571]

ATX,

HOOPS3D and Eyeshot Ultimate are two that I have found. Eyeshot was very easy to implement (it is .Net based), but lacked some of the advanced graphical features of HOOPS3D. However, for FEA results is not like you need reflections, shadowing, and all the other rendering type graphical features.

If you find any others post back or email me. I would be interested in see what you find as well.

Steve


Stephen Seymour, PE
Seymour Engineering & Consulting Group

http://www.seymourecg.com

 

[DanStro]

You might want to look at VTK (

http://www.vtk.org/).

It's open source and I think CAELinux uses it as the main postprocessor (though I may be wrong about this).

HTH,
Dan