How can I promote imported connections to remote points in Mechanical?

Jimmy He
Jimmy He Member, Employee Posts: 22
10 Comments First Answer First Anniversary Name Dropper
✭✭✭✭

I have a model with many imported connections (read from an external FE input file), how can I edit them and promote them to remote points in Mechanical via scripting?

Comments

  • Jimmy He
    Jimmy He Member, Employee Posts: 22
    10 Comments First Answer First Anniversary Name Dropper
    ✭✭✭✭

    There can be two types of connections: rigid (RBE2) and deformable (RBE3), the APIs to edit and promote them to remote point are slightly different.

    For rigid connections, the table in Mechanical looks like the following:

    To edit the reference node ID and promote to remote point, one can use the following:

    # Rigid connectors
    obj = DataModel.GetObjectsByName('Rigid Remote Connectors(External Model)')[0]
    n_rows = obj.Count
    for r in range( 1,n_rows+1 ):
        row = obj.GetObject(r)
        # Modify reference node ID
        row.SetPropertyValue('ReferenceNodeId',1)
        # Promote to remote point
        obj.Promote([r],1)
    

    For deformable connections, the table in Mechanical looks like this:

    To edit the reference node ID and promote to remote point, one can use the following:

    # Deformable connectors
    obj = DataModel.GetObjectsByName('Flexible Remote Connectors(External Model)')[0]
    n_rows = obj.Count
    for i , row in enumerate( obj ):
        # Modify reference node
        row.SetPropertyValue('ReferenceNode',1)
    
        # Promote to remote point
        obj.Promote([i+1],1)
    

    Note the slight differences in the property name and syntax in both cases.