I wanted to check if PrePoMax now has the ability to plot free body forces/diagrams.
I haven’t found anything on the topic, apart from some old forum threads where users were asking for it as a future feature.
I’m just bringing the question up again to see if there are any updates.
Thanks!
The closest you can get to that is with the Section output available since v2.5.0. It provides total forces and moments at the selected surfaces (also interior) obtained by integrating the stresses. Of course, there’s also regular nodal history output to get (individual or total) reaction forces, but it only makes sense for regions with BCs.
Come on! Understanding the concept of a free body diagram is fundamental to understanding FEA analysis. You are probably asking for the reaction forces, much different from a Free Body Diagram
Not necessarily. Some software offers similar features. In Abaqus, there is so-called Free Body Cut. It displays the forces and moments at the selected cross-section.
But this is meant for internal forces while external forces may indeed be evaluated using RF. There’s just no symbol plot feature in PrePoMax yet (ParaView has it, though).
