Be careful when applying force

waluyo

I select three nodes, then select new force then I enter 3000N in direction x.
Maybe some users will think every node will be assigned 3000N each, but in fact each node will have 1000N each. I can see when this is saved in calculix .inp, it will be clear

*CLOAD
2,1,1000
3,1,1000
6,1,1000

I am suggesting this is "New TOTAL force", or if possible there are two options that can be selected: applying as total force or individual force.

Victor

This is a tricky one and other people have run into it too. I'm not sure how to solve it. "Total force" might suggest other meanings like the sum of all forces on the model so I'm not sure there. Perhaps it just comes down to doing a sanity check on the reaction forces or the output, like you did.

The common principle is that all the regular loads and constraints are totals. So if it says 3000 N in the outline tree, then it really is 3000 N, not quietly being multiplied by 3. I know this is different from many other FEA programs so it's confusing. It is however consistent with forces on faces. If you apply 3000 N to several element faces, it only makes sense for that to mean 3000 N total, not per face. One exception is node rotation which uses the word "node" to try to indicate that each node is rotated independently, not the whole selection about a common axis.

davefo

could you add tooltip when hovering over load arrow or selecting node and rightclick which shows the values alternatively a checkbox for selecting load per node so if not ticked the value is divided between the nodes