Review and Plot a System

  1. From the Systems Review - Element/Material/Ply dialog, select a system type from the drop-down menu.
    Option Description
    Elemental Select to review the orientations of the following element systems:
    1D elements, shells, and solids
    • 1D Bars, Beams, Rods, etc. are supported for OptiStruct and Nastran solvers. See the HyperView Solver Interfacing topic for information regarding all of the supported element types.
    Known Limitations:
    • The location of the 1D systems on HyperMesh and HyperView may be different, depending on the end/offset conditions, however the orientations should match. HyperView draws systems at the centroid of the 1D element.
    2D and 3D
    • Penta6 in HyperView and OptiStruct are different from Nastran.
    Material Select to review the orientations of various material systems.
    Material
    • Plot composite stress/strain in Elemental, Material, Global, or User-defined systems.
    • Overlay tensor plots (composite stress/strain) with material direction plot.
    • Material systems are available as resolved in systems in Contour/Iso/Tensor panels for the data types supported.
    Known Limitations:
    • For plotting data types that do not have relevance to the Material system (for example, Stress with Z1 and a Z2 data type), it is not advised that you apply the Resolved-in system of Material, because this can result in incorrect transformations.
    • Composite stress is required as a data type in order to view ply layers in the dialog.
    • See the HyperView Solver Interfacing topic for information regarding all of the supported solver and element types.
    Ply Select to review the orientations of various ply systems.
    Ply
    Ply systems are available as resolved in systems in Contour/Iso/Tensor panels for the data types supported.
    Known Limitations:
    • For plotting data types that do not have relevance to the Ply system (for example, Stress with Z1 and a Z2 data type), it is not advised that you apply the Resolved-in system of Ply, because this can result in incorrect transformations.
    • Composite stress is required as a data type in order to view ply layers in the dialog.
    • See HyperView Solver Interfacing for information regarding all of the supported solver and element types.
    Tip: You can also use the arrow up/down buttons to conveniently step through the other available system types.
  2. The current layer selected for view is displayed; however you can use the drop-down menu to make another selection from the list.
    Tip: You can also use the arrow up/down buttons to conveniently step through the other available layers/plies.
    Note: This option is only applicable for Ply systems (it will be disabled/grayed out for all Elemental and Material systems).
  3. Optional: Before plotting and reviewing a system, you may pick one or more elements or components from the model.
    • Click the input collector (Elements or Components) and select By ID.
    • Pick entities directly from the model in the modeling window.
    Tip: You can also use the quick window selection method for picking entities in the modeling window
    If no selection is made, the plot will be applied to displayed elements by default.
  4. Click Plot to apply and plot the various options for the selected system.
Use the various display and axes/scaling options to customize the appearance of the system plot.