Node selection methods

JRP

Hello all, I'm a new Mecway user and I'm getting ued to it slowly. I was working with Ansys Mechanical APDL (not Workbench) for last 4 years and Mecway is a little different. From what I've tried and seen until now I think it is a great software for smaller users.

It is only that I'm used to powerful node selection tools in Ansys. For instance: I have a circular plate meshed with shell elements. What is the easiest was to select a set of nodes whic are located on the same radius on that plate? In Ansys I would select polar coordinate system and then select nodes on specifed radius. In Mecway I'm trying with circular selection but I don't know how to deselct nodes that are inside that radius.

Maybe I will succeed in starting a little discussion on node selection methods

Victor

Hello JRP

Yes, the circle selection tool can do that but it takes two passes - first select everything inside and at the required radius, then repeat holding the CTRL key to deselect everything inside but not at the required radius.

The CTRL key causes the selection tool to toggle the selected state of each node/face/element it catches.

If you find that you end up moving nodes instead of drawing a selection region, then hold SHIFT to force it to do selecting instead of node dragging. This is often required for circles like you describe where there's a node at the center.

JRP

Thanks for answer Victor. It works. It is maybe harder to do it when you have smaller elements and you don't see exactly where your radius is because red dots from all the nodes are already overlaping.

Victor

A formula driven selection tool would be a nice solution to this, and others have requested that so it's on my list.

Often though, by the time a mesh gets too dense to pick out individual nodes, it's past the stage of hand editing anyway. If I'm doing a mesh manually, I usually work with a very coarse mesh of quadratic elements and avoid node loads. That way you can refine it quickly without reworking anything or selecting any nodes in the fine mesh.