Learning Forum

[Johannes Reinken]

Hello,

I modelled a simple geometry using BEAM189-Elements. The preprocessing and static analysis work fine. I now want to plot the Normal forces in the beam elements and export the plot. Using "ETABLE,Normal_Force,Smisc,1" the plotting works fine. However, when i use the "/show,png,,0" command (or in GUI: "PlotCtrls -> Redirect Plots -> To PNG File) , the lines are only one pixel wide and hardly visible, especially if i add a white background. Is there an option to export nice PNG-Files?

See the Commands i used for Postprocessing below.

Thanks for your help!

 

 

/post1

set,last

etable,Nodal_Force,SMISC,1

pletab,Nodal_Force,noav

 

! commands taken from session  editor:
! settings for png-file

/show,png,,0

pngr,comp,1,-1

pngr,orient,horiz

pngr,color,2

pngr,tmod,1

/gfile,800,

 

! Export PNG-File

/replot

 

 

[Mike Rife]

Hi Johannes

What do you mean by 'nice'?  This is a serious question.  There are a lot of graphic settings available.  But if we don't know what you would accept as a 'good' image it's hard to give good, specific advice.  Do you want the lines to show as two pixels wide?  Maybe show the beams cross section instead of just a line?  Something else?

Mike

[Johannes Reinken]

 

Hi Mike,

thanks for your reply. And sure, i should have specified that!

So my main problem is that when i use the images (especially with bigger structures) the lines are hardly visible. My main point indeed would be to increase the width of the lines (to 2 or even more pixels), ideally without showing the cross section. (But showing the cross section would also be all right.) 
Furthermore it would be nice to change the colors of the contours / legend individually, because some light colors are not very well visible on white background.

 

[Dave Looman]

It's possible that /eshape,1 would display the beam as a solid.  Not sure in your case.  Another idea is to plot the etable result as a raised contour with plls,nodal_force,nodal_force.

[Johannes Reinken]

unfortunately /eshape,1 doesn't seem to work for etable-data.

plls,nodal_force,nodal_force works a little better. but the magnitude of the forces is very different in the horizontal beams, so that they are hardly visible, especially when the structure is bigger.. 
I tried to scale the raised contours with plls,nodal_force,nodal_force, 0.3. That makes the plots look a little better. Is there a possibility to only scale some of the raised contours? (scale the diagonal elements with 0.01 and the horizontal elements with 1.0 for example?)

 

 

 

[Dave Looman]

I was afraid of that.  You could use /noerase to use PLLS with different scale factors:

Select vertical elements

plls,nodal_force,nodal_force, 0.3

Select horizontal elements

/noerase

plls,nodal_force,nodal_force, 0.3

/erase

 

 

[Johannes Reinken]

 

ok, I tried that and it kind of works for showing the plot on the screen. (although it is not very convenient, as the forces in the horizontal beams at the upper and lower border are higher than the ones in the middle and it takes a lot of work to select all the beams and scale them with different values. especially as i have to do that for multiple plots and each time have to select the groups to scale by hand..)

in addition the /show,png,,0 only saves the last plot, so i don’t get the overlaying plots there..

Do you have another idea? There is no command to just scale the width of the line, is there?

 

[Dave Looman]

No, I don't think so.  There's /gthk for post26 graphs, but that doesn't work on the thickness of the element line.  

[Johannes Reinken]

 

hm, all right..

so I wrote a loop which chooses every line consecutively and overlays all the results (using the plls and /noerase commands). my problem is now, that i can’t export that file as one picture. When i export the png I only get the very last result of the plls-command..
is there a solution for that?

At the moment i use the following code to export (as described earlier)

/show,png,,0

pngr,comp,1,-1

pngr,orient,horiz

pngr,color,2

pngr,tmod,1

/gfile,2400,

! Export PNG-File

/replot

 

 

this is what the screenshot looks like:

and this is the png I get: (it only saves the one line at the very top right – the last one i plotted)

 

[Dave Looman]

Could you do a screen grab with a snipping tool like Snip?  A long time ago we used to use /show,file,grph to create a file that could be displayed in the Ansys Display program.  That file would contain the full display.

[Johannes Reinken]

if there is on other way i probably have to do that. I just hoped for an image with higher resolution.
how do you open the grph-file? I couldn't do it with ansys viewer nor with any other program

[Dave Looman]

I could probably send you the DISPLAY program executable.  I don't know if it would give you any additional capability to export high quality graphics.  As shown below the export formats are old.

[Dave Looman]

I was also able to print to pdf from the DISPLAY program.

[Johannes Reinken]

That ounds goood, if possible I'd like to try that!
Could send me the DISPLAY program executable? that yould be great!  (What do I need to do for that?)

[Dave Looman]

What's your email address?

[Johannes Reinken]

 

 

could you send it to ***********@web.de

Thanks a lot!

 

 

[Johannes Reinken]

Did you already send the executable? Unfortunately I didn't receive anything..

[Dave Looman]

Sorry!  Forgot to send it.  Just sent it now.

[Dave Looman]

Email wasn't deliverable.  Do you have a different address.  .web may be the issue.

[Johannes Reinken]

 

maybe [ANOTHER MAIL ADRESS] works?