Quick FEMAP FEM Organization Questions 1

[Socem]

I am new to FEMAP but have been using Hyperworks for several years. FEMAP is what my company has moved to so I have to use it. I am not going to bash FEMAP with Hyperworks examples but am hoping to get some advice on model organization. I have tried calling the FEMAP help desk but they just give yes or no answers and said "well FEMAP is not built for speed." I am looking for best practices from users. Thanks.

Organization:
1) When I import a .stp file is there anyway to maintain the model tree structure that I saw in CATIA? Can this be done with groups or layers? FEMAP seems to just explode the tree into a huge list.
2) From the Geometry list in the FEMAP tree how do I select multiple items to turn on or off? Right now I can only click each check mark individually.
3) When putting a solid into a group FEMAP treats the surfaces separately. Is there a way to add solids and associated surfaces to a group at the same time?
4) Do the FEMAP midsurface commands only work on surfaces or can solid geometry of a sheet metal part be midsurfaced?
5) If Automatic Add is not selected for one of the groups then where does a mesh go when it is created? I can't find it sometimes. This was an issue with Hyperworks too if the active component is not displayed, but there you always had an active component group.
6) Is there a mask command to temporarily hide elements or surfaces?
7) Can groups be assigned a color so that everything in that group is one color? I have a lot of sheet metal parts that are all the same property and material. I would rather have them not all be the same color.

I have more in-depth questions but will try to post them in individual threads when appropriate.

Thank you. Your advise is much appreciated.

 

[rb1957]

2) under view/visibility or under view/options
3) you can add geometry or elments to groups under group
4) try it and see ! it makes sense that a mid-plane is extracted from a thin solid.
5) i think it goes into the default group
6) you can display the active group, a selection of groups, or everything, i use the litle "grp" button on the lower right of the screen
7) yes, it looks as though you can add elements based on colour; you can assign a colour to a layer (and elements to a layer and display elements with their layer colour)


Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[gtae2002]

Hi Socem,

rb1957 provided some great answers and I'd like to expand upon some of what they provided as well

1) Within the geometry branch on the Model Tree, we don't currently have any capability to display things like that in a hierarchical manner, however we are looking at options for that for certain entity types in a future release. We certainly welcome your feedback here and will take it into consideration.

You now, if you're looking for some referential grouping of your geometry, the best bet may be groups, as they can be built off of Boolean rules (ie surfaces on solid) and groups can also reference other groups. They will have to be created manually though.

2) In addition to the view/visibility options, there are also a couple other ways. You can use the View Quick options (CTRL-Q) to toggle Parasolid entities on and off, or within the tree, you can CTRL-click to select multiple items. From there, right-click on one of the cheekbones (not the title itself), and you'll see a few extra options: Show Selected Only, Show Selected, Hide Selected, Show All, Hide All and Show/Hide Reverse. Note that the last 3 commands operate on the independent of what is actually selected. You're probably looking for either the Show Selected or Hide Selected options.

3) You can use the Group-> Surface-> on Solid operation

4) There may be some confusing nomenclature between what's considered a "solid" in the CAD world vs. what we consider a "solid", but the straightforward answer here is anything that has a volume (thickness > 0) can be a candidate for midsurface extraction. If the sheet metal part you brought in from Catia has a thickness, then it can be midsurfaced. If it's just bent sheet metal, then I might also suggest checking out the "Geometry-> Midsurface-> Offset Tangent Surfaces..." command as it's designed for things like this.

In case you're interested, FEMAP also supports Parasolid surfaces in addition to actual Parasolid "solids". What makes Parasolid surfaces special is that we treat them like solids for some geometric operations. As such, you can use many of the "Geometry-> Solid" operations on Parasolid surfaces as well as solids. You just can't midsurface them.

5) If automatic add for grouping is not turned on (either for the active group or a specified group), then any new entities created just don't get grouped. If you do "Show Full Model" (instead of active group or selected groups), you'll see them. Entities in FEMAP don't have to be grouped. They can also exist in any number of groups.

6) How you do this depends partly on how you have your model organized, but my favorite way is to use Groups to organize the model and then selectively show/hide different groups via the tree. You have to be in "Show Multiple Groups" mode for this.

There are other quick options too. Within the tree, you can turn on and off entities based on type, topology, material and property. If you've set up your model where you have different properties for every area of concern, the property view toggles can be very powerful. One word of caution though - it's possible to get confused if you start combining too many of the check boxes together and forget how your view is actually constructed. If you get worked into a corner like this, you can reset all the visibility check boxes by going into the quick options (CTRL-Q) and clicking the "Reset All" button.

7) You can do this by "Modify-> Color-> Element" (or whatever entity) and then using the group selector to select your elements. That will actually modify the element color as it's rendered in the view.

FEMAP has three modes we use for coloring certain entities (you can see these options in the "View Toolbar-> View Style-> Color With" for elements) - Element Colors, Property Colors and Material Colors. Other options are available for geometric entities in view options. If you modify the color via the way described, it will effect the element color. Have you wondered why we have colors available in the Material and Property dialogs? It's for the last two reasons. If you happen to organize your model with different materials and properties for different areas of concern, you can modify the color on the material or property and change the color mode to one of these other options and everything will be updated automatically for you. It doesn't sound like that's how you've got your model organized right now so that may not be the quickest way for you, but it's something to think about.

I hope this helps to answer your questions.

 

[Socem]

Thank you very much for your responses.

 

[BlasMolero]

Dear Socem,
As an add-on to what commented here by others colleges, I suggest to explore the LAYER capabilities of FEMAP, additional to groups: when working with geometry this is exceptionaly powerful, all new entiries created gos to the ACTIVE LAYER. For instance, you mentioned midsurfacing, a common task to perform in FEM/FEA: before issuing the command "Geometry > midsurface > automatic" create a new layer, ie, MIDSURFACE. As you create it the layer becames active. Then run the MIDSURFACE command, the resulting geometry goes to the active layer, as well as mesh, property or material definition, etc.. As long as you don't change the active layer you can work the geometry of the midsurface (to perform imprints lice point-to-edge, edge-to-edge, washer, pads, ETC..) ALL will be there. If you organize your model in layers (I share the same layer for both geometry & mesh as well as properties) you can play with the SHOW/HIDE visibility icons and quickly create you FE model .... who told you that FEMAP is not for speed??. Ignorants, FEMAP is one of the faster & quality FEM codes of the world, is simply a question to understand the basic rules, ask for a two-days training to your reseller and you are done!.
Any question please pose here, we all will be happy to help.
Best regards,
Blas.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Blas Molero Hidalgo
Ingeniero Industrial
Director

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