Component Handling

Inquisitor

I'm using primarily shells and the structure has different thicknesses throughout. I'm finding the only way to account for this is by making a separate component and separate material just to account for the thickness change. Using orthotropic and laminate properties only aggravates this. I'm finding I have hundreds of components for even relatively simple structures.

When working with the component treeview, it re-initializes and re-expands under many conditions and the last material I was working invariably is far off the screen and I have to go scrolling and find which was the last material I was working and which is the next one I need to work with. This is aggravated more by the components not being ordered. They could be anywhere in the list of hundreds.

Are there some settings I'm missing or a better way of handling this situation?

Thanks.

Victor

No, you're not missing anything. A lot of different thicknesses isn't something that's very convenient in Mecway v1. Unfortunately you'll need as many components as thicknesses. Version 2 will improve some of the issues with the outline tree but probably not the need for so many components.

Much as I hate to say this, for such a complex model, it might be easier to define all the materials and components manually with a text editor on the liml file.

Inquisitor

It the nature of the beast (FEA using laminates with shells). I doubt any product out there has a better solution. It would go a long way to help if the tree view didn't re-initialize when changes were made and there was some way of ordering the components. Even if it is only alphabetical, I could simply set up some naming convention that gets them in the order I want.