Two question about Patran/Nastran- Matlab

[khashpj]

Hi
I have two questions and I would appreciate your help.

1) How could I get the exact number of elements? whether in f06 file or in Patran it self?

2) I am trying to write Matlab code that could perform the following task:

Imagine I have a structure (say a plate) I would fix one side of this plate and apply a load on the other side. Now I would like to run my model for N iterations (N= Number of elements) and each time I rune the model I would like to fix one element (additional to the actual boundary condition) and save the results. Then in next run I would like to fix another element instead of the previous one and save the new results. This iteration should continue till I save the results for fixing each element.

I have been told that I can write a Matlab code that could fix each element, run Nastran and save results and so on to the next element.
My problem is that I do not know which data file I should use for such task. There are information in f06 but I can not find the elements information in f06 and I have no idea how to fix them and also how to order Nastran run the new system
Do you have any ideas that could help me?
Thanks

 

[hezhj2000]

The results can be saved in different format files. For your case, probably f06 or pch formats will be a good choice as they are ASCII files. If you are looking for displacement results, you should search 'D I S P L A C E M E N T' in the f06 file, then you will see a table with displacement results. If you are looking for stress results, you should search 'S T R E S S'.

It should not be a hard task. One thing that takes some effort is to find out the grid points that are related to an element because you cannot constrain an element directly. You can only constrain nodes.