Systems Review Dialog

The Systems Review dialog allows you to review the orientations of various element systems (1D, 2D, or 3D), as well as material and ply systems. Reviewing these systems enables you to assess the integrity of model and understand the results in significance to the system of interest. Element systems can be reviewed to check normal orientations, proper connectivity, or the beam orientations. While most of these checks are performed in the pre-processing stage, this tool acts like a verification aide in post-processing. The system plots can be overlaid with Vector and Tensor plots to confirm that the results and their orientations are accurate. Various display options are available which allow you to customize the appearance of the system plot.

To access this dialog, click on the System button on the Results toolbar, or from the Result menu select Plot > System.

systems_review_dialog_hv

Systems Review - Element/Material/Ply dialog

Note - For reviewing 1D Elemental, Ply, and Material systems, the Advanced Result Math template must be selected in the Load Model panel when initially loading the model and result file. In addition, a solver input deck is also required as the model file.

The various options available in the dialog allow you to control the display and visualization of the systems in the graphics area:

System type

The current system type selected for view is displayed, however you can use the drop-down menu to make another selection from the list. You can also use the arrow up/down buttons to conveniently step through the other available system types.

Elemental

Select to review the orientations of the following element systems:

•	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.

•	Penta6 in HyperView and Optistruct are different from Nastran.

Material

Select to review the orientations of various material systems.

•	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 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.

Select layer	The current layer selected for view is displayed; however you can use the drop-down menu to make another selection from the list. 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).
Pick entities	Before plotting and reviewing a system, you may pick one or more elements or components from the model. You can do this by picking entities directly from the screen, using the quick window selection, or by clicking the Elements (or Components) input collector and using the extended entity selection menu. If no selection is made, the plot will be applied to displayed elements by default. See Selecting Entities Using the Input Collector for more information on selecting entities.
Plot	Click to apply and plot the various options for the selected system.
Display options	The following options allow you to change how the vectors are displayed and will automatically be applied to the model:

Visibility

You can create a vector plot using the X, Y, or Z axis.

X, Y, Z

Quickly turn on/off each axis by activating/deactivating each check box. By default only the X and Y axis are checked for display.

Color

Allows you to select the vector color for the X, Y, or Z axis.

X, Y, Z

To change the color of an axis, click the color box to display the color palette and then select a different color.

Axes/scaling options

The following options allow you to change the axis label, scaling, and arrow type used for the displayed vectors.

Axis Label

Use the drop-down menu to select the axis label:

		XYZ	Displays the axis for each vector as X, Y, and Z.
		RST	Displays the axis for each vector as R, S, and T.
		UVW	Displays the axis for each vector as U, V, and W.
		123	Displays the axis for each vector as numerical values 1, 2, and 3.
		None	Displays the vector head as a straight line.

Size scaling

Use the drop-down menu to select the vector size scaling method:

		Normalized	Automatically scales the vector length (the average vector length will be approximately 2% of the model size). This is set as the default scale mode.
		Uniform	All vectors are displayed in a uniform size. You can increase or decrease the size using the Scale value text box (located to the right of the drop-down menu).

Arrow type

Use the drop-down menu to display the vector head as an arrow or a straight line:

		Arrow	Displays the vector head as an arrow.
		None	Displays the vector head as a straight line.

Clear

Click to clear the current plot for the selected system in the graphics area.

Note - The dialog will remain open.

Click to close/exit the dialog. All current plots will remain displayed in the graphics area (until they are cleared using the Clear button).