Dear Matej,
when a structure is loaded by several nodal load specified by different forces (and/or imposed displacements) prepomax creates individual node sets for each nodal force/displacement.
In the case of civil structures it happens that even mid-sized models with nodal loads are very heavy to edit/display. The problems arise especially if the nodal loads are input by importing a calculix .inp file.
I don’t know is there are other ways to define nodal loads without slowering Prepomax. Moreover in the case of nodal loads/displacement it would be useful to suppress displaying the loads on request, because the nodal loads symbols hide the model itself.
Thanks for any help.
Vittorio
I moved this to Feature Requests since there’s no bug here.
The behavior with set creation is basically the same as in Abaqus.
How are you defining those loads ? Do they involve large spatial variation so that concentrated forces are needed instead of pressure/surface traction loads ?
It is possible to hide load symbols. Just select them in the tree and press spacebar or right-click and select Hide.
Currently, I would suggest hiding the nodal loads. The problem is, that even nodal forces from the same surface traction of a constant value, do not have the same amplitude so it is hard to merge them back into a surface traction load.
Matej, Jakub,
in the picture I tried to explane the problem I face.
In the analysis of buildings the loads are often randomly located over nodes, depending on non-structural features. Irrespective of the structural and self weight, the loads are detemined using a variety of tools (e.g. spreadsheets or cad) to obtain text files in calculix .inp format and then iimported in Prepomax. When imported the model grows to a size that is impractical to manage. Each nodal load is assigned to a new node set. After having imported the model, even a rotation of the image takes several seconds, editing the model is almost impossible.
Thanks
Vittorio
OK, so each node is loaded with its own force vector. Change the Symbols drop box in the Toolbar to None and rotate the model. Does it help?
If yes, you can select all loads in the model tree and hide them (select first, hold SHIFT, and select last). Using Symbols: None will not help in the long run since when you edit something in a step, the setting of Symbols will change to the step you are editing.
I am thinking of what to do for the future, but other than turning off the symbols will not help. I could try to simplify the arrows a little when the number of arrows is larger than some value.
Matej,
changing the symbols to “None” is effective in displaying the model. By the way the import procedure is very time consuming (10 minutes or more with about 2500 nodal loads).
Vittorio
Ok, I understand the problem. I will try to figure out what is the bottleneck. Can you share a model? Otherwise, I will try to reproduce the issue.
I have updated the v1.4.1 release to speed up the reading of such .inp files and screen draw time. Please, give it a try.
@Matej I get the message below when trying to download the latest. Is it perhaps just a firewall on my end ?
I am sorry. The file was blocked somehow. Not it should work.
No worries; and thank you.
Matej,
the new version runs faster both in import and in showing the symbols, thank you.
Vittorio
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If possible, try to merge all loads with the same direction nad amplitude to reduce the workload even further.