Writing as a newbie to PrePoMax and Calculix, I have done a little reading and haven’t got an answer yet so….. I notice that you can use equation to define a field output but my question is more general. My work is in composites and a “shell” can have many layers and it is desirable to analysis output on a layer by layer basis and there are a large number of different (and complex) failure criteria that can be considered. Is there any method where I could import and externally created file with a scaler field to map? Clearly all manner of ‘field’ data is stored in the standard results files on a some basis ( nodal/elemental/integration point etc) so mimicking that in a file might be a way to go. some insight and/or pointer would be helpful.
A minor second point when reading a .frd file of my models I am getting an “error could not load ……dat file” message. Is that normal? Is it because the .dat had unsupported data.(it has element stresses in the ply orientations rather than global axes).
I was really looking to see what can be done in PrePoMax in terms of a work flow, I am not looking at a specific analysis. I could display a scaler field in an third app or indeed display in my own software. I have just been looking at the structure and documentation of the .frd file and it seem it would be quite easy Post calculix to add named Nodal Results Block(s) but if PrePoMax will process them is another question! I might as a quick test hijack the existing nodal “Error” block values with some test data as a quick look see.
It would seem having spent a couple of minutes with a text editor you can define additional nodal field and rather pleasingly PrePoMax will read and display them.
PrePoMax tries to read all data in the .frd file, even when it is not directly integrated in terms of units. If the field output is not recognized, no unit is attached to it. I don’t think the FRD data header supports string values that could include units.
Yes I looked at “Units ?” and then looked at the format document but I could not see a field to define, just a spec code e.g. “scaler”. Still it is not a problem, the name of the field gives enough opportunity to add some meaningful info. So I could add FOS values by a named Criteria in all manner of useful ways. This is one of the challenges with composites as simple stresses or strains are not enough. A haven’t looked but are “user routines” or plug in dll’s possible with PrePomax?
Thanks for the reply. Adding composite failure criteria is the last link in a tool chain. You need to manage the layers and orientations and manage different material models, there are then quite a number of different failure criterial that can be applied. It might be quite a lot of work to do generally. Many packages manage some of this with UMAT and similar user code options. I am not making feature requests at this point I am just scoping where things currently are. The Calculix/PrePoMax looks quite promising in terms of functionality but it is early days for me and I need to do so more work on this.
