Use TREAD for a 3D Table in APDL?

[allintime]

Question: How do you use the TREAD command to read a 3D table into APDL? I found help for 1D and 2D, but not 3D.

Background: In APDL, I use tabular boundary conditions in a non-linear, transient analysis. These boundary conditions vary in time and in two directions, X and Y and each has their own local CS. I use 12 tables that are large (50x200x10), so there is a lot of data to read in. I use the following commands to build the table:

*DIM,BULK_TEMPERATURE_1,TABLE,50,200,10,TIME,Y,X,LOCAL_CS_1
BULK_TEMPERATURE_1(0,0,1)=0
...
BULK_TEMPERATURE_1(50,200,10)= 100

I've automated the process of writing this code, but the resulting scripts are large and difficult to work with. I would rather have APDL read the data directly using the TREAD command. I've gotten this to work for a 2D table, but cannot figure it out for 3D. Basically, how do I get data from excel (or matlab) with multiple sheets to read into APDL?

The documentation on TREAD (APDL 17.0 command reference) says it is not applicable for 4 or 5-D tables, but none of the help I've seen online shows an example for 3D. The help just says it needs to be in a "tab-delimited, blank-delimited, or comma-delimited format" but doesn't give an option to read in individual sheets.

 

[allintime]

Nevermind, more digging through ANSYS help and I figured it out.
Note to self: ANSYS's online documentation is more thorough than the user manuals

Source: Online Documentation: ANSYS Mechanical APDL, section 3.10.5.5
"•The values are read straight across the rows until all columns on each row of the array are filled; ANSYS then wraps from one row to the next and begins to fill those columns, and so on"
This also applies to multiple sheets (or planes as ANSYS calls them). So once you reach the end of the first plane in the .csv file, you just keep writing the data for the next sheet.

Or more simply, copy and paste the data from the following sheets to the first sheet in excel. Then save in ASCII format. I tried it and it works.

 

[rickfischer51]

The documentation for MAPDL is pretty good, the documentation for WB sucks profusely. Also, a surprisingly good source of help is youtube. Its hit or mis that your topic is covered, but it has helped me out from time to time
.

Rick Fischer
Principal Engineer
Argonne National Laboratory