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missing white spaces in grid data in exporting mesh

Altair Forum User

Hello everyone,

I am having trouble exporting the mesh from Hypermesh. Some white spaces separating the fields are missing.

*) With the RADIOSS profile, the first three nodes of the grid data look like this.

1 10.4352852680878 0.374999999999996 1.69690861652916
2 10.0920996147679-3.8857805861880E-15 1.59540682856021
3 10.2957517115474-3.5527136788005E-15 1.49409343503715

*) The situation is even worse with OptiStruct. The output file (first three nodes) looks like this.

GRID 1 10.435290.375 1.696909
GRID 2 10.0921 0.0 1.595407
GRID 3 10.295750.0 1.494093

I don't want to create white space manually because the meshes I work with, in general, contain thousands of nodes. So, I need a proper solution for this issue. I am using the HyperWorks14.0 - student version.

Thanks,

Chenna.

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QuyNguyenDai

Hello everyone,

I am having trouble exporting the mesh from Hypermesh. Some white spaces separating the fields are missing.

*) With the RADIOSS profile, the first three nodes of the grid data look like this.

1 10.4352852680878 0.374999999999996 1.69690861652916
2 10.0920996147679-3.8857805861880E-15 1.59540682856021
3 10.2957517115474-3.5527136788005E-15 1.49409343503715

*) The situation is even worse with OptiStruct. The output file (first three nodes) looks like this.

GRID 1 10.435290.375 1.696909
GRID 2 10.0921 0.0 1.595407
GRID 3 10.295750.0 1.494093

I think this is 'fixed format' of Optistruct. No spaces, no problem /emoticons/default_smile.png' srcset='/emoticons/smile@2x.png 2x' title=':)' width='20' /> because the reader will work on the length of input data.

Have a look at Reference Guide:

OptiStruct_2017_Reference_Guide.png.248256c1e0658f57a365445646f7cfcf.png

Altair Forum User

Hi Chenna,

As Nguyen-Dai told this is a fixed format. We suggest you to install Textpad and open the starter (_0000.rad) file in Textpad which shows better alignment of keywords and numbers.

As a general note, for nodes in RADIOSS the format is as shown below.

For more information please go through the Reference Guide of RADIOSS, which can be downloaded from http://forum.altairhyperworks.com/index.php?/topic/20652-radioss-2017-reference-manual-documents-user-guide-and-tutorials/

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

Altair Forum User

Thank you Nguyen and George, for your answers.

Unfortunately, they do not help my cause. I am using Hypermesh only to generate meshes for my in-house FEA code. So, the RADIOSS reader does not help me. I have to have the coordinate with some delimiter which I can process to be readable into my code.

Textpad is my default text editor. I also opened the .rad files in Notepad, Wordpad and MS Word, and I didn't see any difference in the format. I have attached the file for your reference. Please not me know if I am doing something wrong.

The only option I can think of now is to generate to an AWK script to break the coordinates. I must say that this is very inconvenient. Please let me know if there is any other way around this.

Unable to find an attachment - read this blog

tinh

Hi , you can try this way

- use optistruct profile

- set up a temporary loadcase (just to run optistruct)

- enter analysis > control cards> ECHO : this will make OS write out GRID, ELEMENT,.. to *.out file

- export data to *.fem file

- to activate comma delimiter when OS echo, open *.fem file and add line 'ECHOON PARSED' below the line 'ECHO'

- save *.fem file and run OS, then open *.out file to copy data with comma delimiter

QuyNguyenDai

You have several posibilities:

Write you code to read 'fixed format' output of Optistruct. Also try 'long fixed format' yet?
Write yourself a FE output template to export the mesh directly into your in-house software format.

Altair Forum User

Thank you all for your answers.

I did not like Tinh's solution because I do not like the idea of running a solver simply for the sake of obtaining a better format for the mesh data. It is cumbersome.

@Nguyen, I could not figure out what 'fixed format' and 'long fixed format' are. I don't see them in v14.0.

I solved my problem by

1.) developing a simple awk script for the file generated using v14.0,

2.) installing 2017 version in which Optistruct has 'free format' which exports the data in comma separated format which I can process easily.

Thank you.

QuyNguyenDai

Thank you all for your answers.

@Nguyen, I could not figure out what 'fixed format' and 'long fixed format' are. I don't see them in v14.0.

I found in my HW v14:

optistruc_1.png.1ea384198eb47dbef900136ed211b6ed.png

optistruc_2.png.61a02577d6c8d7b2a0e6e5309d7efbc3.png

FaroukM

Well there is actually 2 solutions :

%% First one : Standard format. In this case the *fem file is written like

GRID NumOfNode XCoordYCoordZCoord % NB = XCoord, YCoord and ZCoord contain 8 characters, It's easy to write a code to separate all this things

%% Second One : Long Format. In the second case, the *fem file can be read easily !!

GRID* NumOfNode XCoord YCoord

* ZCoord

Cheers !