Importing BDF from Hypermesh to Patran and preserve property names?

[enghelp2806]

Hi all,

I normally work in Hypermesh, but have recently been required to use some tool that only works with Patran. I have a large model with many different properties and when I import my Hypermesh BDF into Patran I lose all the property names. They come in along the lines of "Pcomp.1" or "Pshell.15". Is there a way around this? My searches online have come up futile and I'd really like to avoid renaming them one by one.

Thanks!

 

[dmapguru]

I will assume that by BDF you mean a file containing information in MSC Nastran input file format.

Patran will look for a comment on the line preceding the property entry, so take a PSHELL property for example, something like this:

PSHELL 1 1 .2 1 1

If the comment line immediately preceding this property is not of the form:

$ Elements and Element Properties for region : some_name_goes_here

then Patran will name the property as you described using a combination of the primary property entry name (PSHELL) and its ID. If Patran sees a comment line of the form above, it will name the property with the name it finds after the colon (some_name_goes_here in the example)

Other properties (beams, composites) work in a similar way, as do materials etc. To establish the exact format for these other entries, once you have the file imported in Patran (with or without comments), try exporting it to a new MSC Nastran input file and look at the comment lines it writes for the various entries. Adapt your original input file accordingly and you're done.

DG