Modify solid element orientation in HyperMesh

Michael Herve

Overview:

this script offers some capabilities to change solid (hexa) element orientation in HyperMesh

Prerequisite:

Usage/Installation Instructions:

Run the script. A gui opens in HyperMesh, which allows you to review and change hexa orientation

Below is a description of the different options:

Show systems

Display element systems for a given selection. If solid and Shell elements are selected, it will
only display one kind (the first found element is crucial to make the decision).

Define orientation element

To define a reference element in order to orient the mesh later, you may select one shell or solid element. The type and the id of the element is shown at the right of the selector afterwards.

Turn clockwise/Turn anti-clockwise

You can orient the reference element to the intended orientation by swapping the node order.
For solids, “clockwise” and “anti-clockwise” is related to the bottom face (xy-plane).

Reverse normal

Allow to change orientation and reverse nde connectivity for shell elments

Orient attached mesh/Orient selection

You can orient either all attached elements or a certain selection.
Note that “attached” is restricted to displayed elements, but not to the selected reference element
type. So you might have to mask connector- or other 1D elements to prevent “bridges” to undesired elements.

Delete systems

To remove the visualization elements

Additional Features:

You can adapt the lines below in the tcl script

1. Create Vectors instead of plot elements
   

Line 3-5 of the TCL file contain
###swap the comment to create vectors instead of plotels.


variable type element ;


#variable type "vector"

After activating the last line (by moving the “#” to the line above) the tool creates vectors.

2. Modifying the length of the visualization entities.

Straight below (line 7 -9), you find
variable xScale 0.4 ;

# scale factor for x relative to element size


variable yScale 0.7 ; # scale for y in relation to x


variable zScale 0.4 ; # scale for z in relation to x

Set these values in order to change the size of the displayed axes.

Post-Requisite:

Release Version: 2024

elemSys3.tcl