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Absolutely. A surface like this that's not the boundary of a solid can't be meshed into a solid. This is the type of thing that'll cause strange crashing and failing of the mesher in Mecway. Unfortunately it doesn't show the problem it so it can be …
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These zig-zag displacements are characteristic of hourglassing http://www.quora.com/What-is-hourglass-effect-in-finite-element-analysis It can happen with quad4 shells in Mecway if they only have point constraints or loads. In this case, you can …
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Here's my attempt at having both ends fixed but no extra tension. It uses the same trick of having a tension force that initially stiffens it to prevent unconstrained rigid body motion, but at the final time step, this artificial tensioning force is…
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Hello Protontim. There are two issues with this file: 1) The mesh is too coarse. Refining it increases the stress so you should keep refining it until the stress stops increasing much. You can also get a big reduction in mesh size (or improvement i…
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Hello barrti The line elements are what has the square section, so it uses both. You could also change it to circular to be closer to a real cable. The only geometric property of the section that it's using is the cross-sectional area. Yes, you ca…
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Hello CMZA. It sounds like you have two disconnected parts in the same STEP file - the pipe and the flange. In that case, Mecway's mesher usually won't work or won't align the nodes on both parts. Instead, you could combine them into a single part.…
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Hello J_Marc While there isn't an equation input for this, you can achieve it using the hydrostatic pressure load. That applies a trapezoidal force but you have to work backwards to calculate the parameters. For example: Maximum linear pressure = …
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Some ways to find them: A) Turn on node and element numbering and if you see two element numbers superimposed on each other, that indicates two elements at the same location. If the two elements have some of their own nodes then use View -> Open…
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Hello prop_design. I'd like to address something you said quite a way back in this thread which I think it's quite important. You probably know some of this but it's also for other people who might be reading this because it's a common issue with de…
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Yea, you can sometimes get really weird elements buried in there with the automesher. I've found the worst ones seem to be where two faces of a tet are nearly co-planar and both on the same surface of the object. It looks perfectly OK visually but m…
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You should expect much more than 416.7MPa there because it's a stress concentration. Not that 808.6 MPa is necessarily correct either though because of the coarse mesh. That's a good point about element quality, Anthony. There are some "kite" shape…
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It just occurred to me that you're probably interested in the stress near the hole, not in the middle of the plate. In that case, yes, you'll need a more refined mesh like you made, and will have to be careful about the distribution of the load. If …
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Link_plate_coarse seems to be OK. I think you have an extra zero in your hand calculation. I get: Stress = F/A = 100kN / 0.0024m^2 = 41.7MPa Mecway shows Stress YY = 40-42MPa on all the nodes in middle cross section of the plate. Link_Plate_Refine…
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It sounds like there's no constraint in the vertical direction. In that case I would expect either a solver failure or a very large (and erroneous) rigid body displacement in the vertical direction if there's any slight imbalance in the opposing for…
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One way would be stiff springs or truss elements since these can only transmit force along their direction. Here's an example. You could also use constraint equations to couple only the translational DOFs in the normal direction, but I think that m…
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J_Marc, the attachment seems to have been lost. If you mean rotating the L beams about their length axis, then you can do that with Element properties -> Orientation. It's a bit tricky with L because you're specifying the direction of the princi…
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Thanks VMH, that's very clear. I would add that you can also move the stiffeners away from the plate a little to make a more realistic connection without the flanges being embedded in the plate. Bonded contact allows some gaps like this and the stru…
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Hello barrti There's no difference in capabilities between the two versions except for the node limit on saving and solving. That number of nodes will usually slow down the graphics. Depending on the complexity of the geometry (lots of exterior fac…
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Hello cwharpe Yes, same directory as the model, unless you specify a rooted path like C:\... Unfortunately, there currently isn't an easier way to sum the forces but I agree it'll be a useful feature.
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Hello dlybbert There isn't a direct way to do this. You could adjust the maximum and minimum so that red only appears for a range of stresses that you want to be red, but then the colors for everything else will generally be inconvenient since they…
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Hello Veto Though I can't see the gif, this problem happens with some video cards. There's a solution that's worked with 64 bit but I'll have to prepare a new one for 32 bit. I'll contact you by private message within a few days.
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Here are some other videos that people have made: Workflow for propeller blades imported from Prop_design. Anthony has done a lot of work to find an easy procedure with good accuracy. http://code.fosshub.com/PROP_DESIGN/downloads Importing a CAD p…
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These are some great videos VMH. Do you mind if I add them to Mecway's YouTube channel too?
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There's no more direct approach yet. One suggestion though - I would use beam elements that are much softer than the tube's material, otherwise they introduce a little bit of artificial stiffness when they have similar Young's modulus and thickness.…
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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 do…
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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 c…
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That's an interesting idea J_Marc There's no difference in the graphics between the demo and full versions. Mecway uses DirectX 9. It looks like there are some complications with that in VirtualBox. Have you been through things like this?http://ww…
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Thanks for another excellent comprehensive video VMH. It seems to finish quite abruptly in the middle of setting meshing parameters. Maybe that's just my internet connection. But it still captures pretty much the whole process.
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Thanks for the file Eric. It's none of what I said in my last post. There are two problems causing this error: 1) The nodes on each corner of the GLASS part are slaves of two sets of bonded contact, which isn't allowed. 2) The 4th bonded contact is…
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I think you're running into a limitation of the thick shell theory and that's why it's overly stiff. The deformation of the solid mesh shows that the cross-section is deforming into a kind of "Z" shape. This violates an assumption that the normal to…
