Analysis How to

Hi all,

say one have a table built in CAD, a simple 4 legs and a shell over it.
i am able to solve it using beams and shells. a rather simple analysis.

but what if i wanted to import the a cad model with the sheet metal linking corners?

as a client,
1. would you settle with the beam+shell study? neglecting the linking corners?? is this the normal project detail supplied?
2. would you demand a study piece by piece?? modeling each piece and loading it?? even if it was the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco???
or rather should one import the overall assembly, define mates (connections) and load it as set and not as separated parts? if yes, how? does any one know a nice tutorial on this??

greetings
rsimoes

I believe there is an assembly tutorial in the downloads section of this site.

That said, there are several ways to work with assemblies. You can use Salome to glue or sew parts together before meshing, or you can merge nodes after meshing. You can use liason commands (within the affe_char_meca operator) in code Aster, you can achieve higher physical accuracy by using non-linear contacts in the Defi_contact operator.

By the way, I am a professional analyst and prefer to use Code Aster over commercial codes - mainly because of its extreme flexibility and supreme ease of manipulation (mostly because the comm files are written in python!)