About solver conversion in HyperMesh
Altair EmployeeAs HyperMesh supports multiple solvers, it offers some conversion capabilities for allowing to pass a model from one profile to another one.
In the latest versions (2021 and upper), we offer different mechanisms for converting from one solver to another:
- Material library
- HyperMesh generic entities
- Hard conversion
- Soft conversion
As a first recommendation, the most recent version you use, the more support for conversion you will get.
Let’s now review the different methods.
Material Library
Material is frequently a pain point in solver conversion, for many reasons (more data in explicit solvers than implicit one, best practices for some material may differ from one solver to another).
Instead of relying on conversion to pass a model from one solver to another, it is more reliable toleverage you materials, build your material library and to use this material library any time you need to witch between solvers:
HyperMesh generic entities:
The best example here is connector. The way a solver represents a spotweld or a fastener can be completely different, and a keyword-to-keyword translation is a NO GO.
Using connectors, you can absorb your connections in your source profile, and realize them again in the converted solver:
From 2022.2, we introduced a new concept, called scenario, which allows to store in a single hm file the representations across your different solver profiles. If you change on the fly the representation through the scenario manager, it will automatically run a soft conversion.
Apart of connectors, you can also absorb Attachments (connections between subsystems) and composite laminates.
Hard conversion
This is the method which exists in HyperMesh from years:
- From drop-down menu Tools -> Convert in the Classic interface
- From drop-down menu File -> Convert in the New interface
When running it, you select your source solver and your target solver. A first limitation concerns the conversions supported in HyperMesh. Indeed HyperMesh does not support any solver A to solver B conversion.
When you run it, a browser is open, which list all entities in your source solver, with a color code:
- green is fully supported
- orange is partially supported
- red is not supported
You can click on run, HyperMesh will change the solver interface and convert the entities.
Behind the scene, HyperMesh is deleting the entities from the source solver, and re-creating them in the target solver.
If you want to use the hard conversion, we recommend:
- to un-realize all HyperMesh generic entities before running the conversion, then realize them again in the converted solver
- to check your model after conversion. Model Checker can be a good starting point for such purpose.
Soft conversion:
From version 2021, we introduced soft conversion mechanisms, which consists of updating entity attributes from source solver to target solver, without deleting original entity and creating a new one.
For using soft conversion, you just need to change the user profile. In the former version, lot of entities were lost, but we are improving soft conversion for extending the entities that can be directly mapped between two solvers.
The entities which are currently supported are nodes, elements, material (elastic data), properties, node ands element sets, tied and general contacts.
Unrealizing the HyperMesh generic entities and re-realizing them, or using the Scenario manager in the latest versions, is still the recommended way to proceed if you want to use soft conversion.