what is alternative way to get surface nodes? 1

[roudan]

Hi

I used to use getBoundingBox() to get surface nodes if outside surface is flat. Now if the surface is not flat, what alternative functions I can use to select nodes on the outside surface?? Thanks a lot


bottom_face=modelInstane.nodes.getByBoundingBox(xMin=X_tolernce*-1,xMax=Model_Width_I+X_tolernce,
yMin=Y_tolernce*-1,yMax=Model_Width_J+Y_tolernce,zMin=ZBot_Under-Z_tolernce,zMax=ZBot_Under+Z_tolernce)

 

[FEA way]

To get nodes only from the outer surface you can create a for loop with if conditional statement inside. Define this statement in such a way that only faces with one associated element are considered (since they belong to the outer surface) and nodes from these faces are obtained.

 

[oldNail]

You can use the part faces to define your set:

[pre]part = mdb.models['Model-1'].parts['Part-1']
set = part.Set(name='Outside', faces=part.faces)[/pre]

 

[roudan]

Thank you so much oldNail. If I have multiple faces( left, right, top and bottom) and I only want to pick bottom face. How to pick that bottom face? I am thinking I can do part.faces[0] or part.faces[1] or part.faces[3]. The question which one to pick? do you have another trick? Thanks

 

[oldNail]

The part.faces is a FaceArray object. I'm sure you can find a FaceArray method that will help in the Scripting manual. In the worst-case you can iterate through each face yourself and compare centroids, normals, sizes, etc.

 

[roudan]

Thank you oldNail.