Proposal for improvement

Moke

Hello Sergio,

I am a very new user of Mecway and really enjoy working with this softway. One drawback became apparent
when I work with older Calculix models, which include constraints in local coordinate systems. Mecway seems to
generate as a result many individual displacement constraints on single nodes. I end up, have easily 50-60 entries
in the tree menu. Now starts the painfull part. I have to delete one constraint after another. Either a "delete all constraints"
option, or at least the windows standard function of using CRTL + ... to select many entries at once would be a
huge improvement.

I strongly propose this enhancement for the next release.

Best Regards,

Morten

Sergio

Hi Morten, first... you should ask to Victor for the improvement, I'm just a happy user of Mecway software.... :-) :-)

I agree with you, a CTRL and SHIFT selection modes on the tree would be very helpfull.

Regards

Victor

Yes, multiple selection or at least multiple deleting has been needed for a long time so I hope to do it but can't promise.

As a workaround, you can open the plain text .liml file with Notepad to delete them. Each constraint looks like in this picture.

Sergio

I was thinking in write some small scripts for automatizing this kind of task from outside the GUI. I work weeks ago in a big assembly with 50-60 components, and adding the same material STEEL for all was a pain (due to the time delay that Mecway took for redisplay the mesh). Another good candidate for such external script would be for deleting the results from a file without have to opening (for big files like 700-800 MB took time in slow hardware).

davefo

Any chances of addition a number display to the cutting plane slider?

how does this work. Is there a default position it starts from?

I tried using it with the view set looking at the YZ plane by right clicking on the Red Axis.

moving the slider then appears to still be moving the cutting plane as if i was looking at the YZ plane with the X axis towards me rather than away.

Isnt this the reverse of what should happen?

Would it be possible for the applied loads name to include the sign?

 

Victor

The cutting plane slider cuts the front off by moving the plane into the screen regardless of how the model is oriented. I suppose it would be more sensible if once you started using it, it locked its direction to the model.

The loads do include a sign where it's meaningful, like pressure or temperature. The vector quantities don't really have a sign so it just shows the non-negative magnitude. Is there a specific load that could show a sign but doesn't?

Sergio

Vicotr, I have noted that the cutting plane cuts leaving the complete elements, so it doesn't form a flat surface. Is possible to cut also the elements?

Regards

Victor

Yes but it's difficult so I don't plan to do that.

davefo

Is was just about to ask the same.

Is it possible to view the results in the viewer for ccx?

or some other viewer?

Dave

davefo

Sergio

Regarding your statement "time delay that Mecway took for redisplay the mesh"

Have you tried turning the mesh off and only showing the outline and surfaces

I tend to use this a lot.

Regards

davefo

Victor 

with regard to the sign being relevant for load values.

Isn't the direction of the load just as relevant as the value?

It would be useful if the axis, magnitude and sign was visible, especially when loads and constraints are turned off.

for example, instead of having 6 loads each labeled as 

Force <15kN> 

Force <15kN>

Force <15kN> 

Force <15kN> 

Force <15kN> 

Force <15kN>

it would be better if they could be:

Force <-X 15kN>

Force <X 15kN>

Force <-Y 15kN>

Force <Y 15kN>

Force <-Z 15kN>

Force <Z 15kN>

or even

Force <-X 15kN, -Y 15kN, -Z 15kN> etc

similarly for pressure, line loads, Moments etc

if not in the visible label maybe shown as a tooltip when hovering over a selected load as attached

Regards

Victor

VTK support which Sergio suggested recently is probably the next thing I expect to do for results export. For now, if you're using the CCX solver, you can write a batch file to automatically open the output file in CGX after it solves.

Your tooltip idea sounds good. I'll have another look at showing the components in the outline tree, but I suspect it'll be too much data to have always visible on the screen.

Sergio

Hi Víctor, i'm very pleased to hear that you will work n VTK support. One thing that I miss using Paraview is the hability to hide and show components, can you take this in mind?

Regards

davefo

what is vtk?

Sergio

Is a very common file format for write FEA/CFD results, and there is a postprocessor called Paraview freely available that can open this vtk files. You can add a little of candy for the eyes to your results using Paraview.

Regards