Search element by ID

Sometimes ccx solver complains about nonpositive jacobian determinant of certain elements. It is helpful to visualize the failed elements by ID in PrePoMax.

As a sort of workaround, you can choose to create an element set, click More and switch to “ID” in FE mesh based selection. Then you can input the element IDs one by one and they will be added to a set and thus highlighted.

Also, elements to which the nonpositive jacobian error applies are automatically added to an element set that you can check in FEModel tab.

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If you run the analysis from PrePoMax, an element set is created containing such elements. The problem is when you add some additional keywords and run the analysis from the command line. Then this does not work. A solution could be that I add the support for running the analysis based on the selected .inp file.

Indeed, I am running PrePoMax in a virtual machine, and ccx in Linux environment. Probably I can re-run the failed simulation from PrePoMax to generate the element set for review.

It was, after CalculiX solver running PrePoMax creates part or group of element failed at unacceptable Jacobian.

Someone can easily select the group and do mesh refinement at these areas until the solver successful.

In v1.4.0 it’s possible to search for nodes/elements and geometric features by their IDs so I’m closing this request.