missing white spaces in grid data in exporting mesh

Altair Forum User
Altair Forum User
Altair Employee
edited October 2020 in Community Q&A

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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Answers

  • Q.Nguyen-Dai
    Q.Nguyen-Dai Altair Community Member
    edited September 2017

    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
    Altair Forum User
    Altair Employee
    edited September 2017

    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"?>node.PNG

  • Altair Forum User
    Altair Forum User
    Altair Employee
    edited November 2020

    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
    tinh Altair Community Member
    edited September 2017

    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

  • Q.Nguyen-Dai
    Q.Nguyen-Dai Altair Community Member
    edited September 2017

    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
    Altair Forum User
    Altair Employee
    edited September 2017

    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.

  • Q.Nguyen-Dai
    Q.Nguyen-Dai Altair Community Member
    edited September 2017

    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
    FaroukM Altair Community Member
    edited June 2019

    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 !