Altair HyperView 2020 Release Notes

General

Highlights

  • New Upfront Data Loading for crash post-processing
  • HWC Language to record and automate workflows
  • APIs for finding hotspots and showing them in the Best View
  • Realistic Rendering

New Features

Upfront Data Loading
A new workflow emphasizing upfront data loading is implemented for standard crash post processing use cases. It is available as a separate profile that can be enabled in HyperWorks Desktop using a preference file. Once enabled, a new mode with a different approach to loading data and post-processing is available.
Some highlights and key benefits are:
  • Uses a multi-threaded, asynchronous data loading engine resulting in faster load times.
  • New Load Data Browser designed to:
    • Select upfront and load only animation steps and results data of interest.
    • Load several results at once, monitor load progress and cancel loading.
  • Automatic caching of loaded data with option to unload data when no longer necessary.
  • Improved workflow efficiency: Interact with the application and do other tasks while data is loading instead of waiting until loading completes.
  • Memory monitoring to warn if usage reaches a certain threshold and cancel any ongoing loading.
Please note that at this point, certain HyperView tools are not available in this profile and support is limited to transient outputs from specific solvers. Coverage will be expanded in future releases. Further performance and memory optimization is also planned. For more details, please consult the User’s Guide.

Shown below is a comparison of time to load data in v2020 using Upfront Data Loading profile with v2019.1. Various full vehicle production crash models of different formats were used in this benchmark and the time taken to load (a) model (b) animation frames (c) data for displacement contour and (d) data for strain or stress contour was measured in both versions. This benchmark was conducted on a Windows 10 computer with Intel Xeon CPU (8 CPUs, 2.8Ghz) and 32GB RAM and files were in local disk.



Figure 1. Data Loading Times
Note: Performance gains could vary depending on several factors such as hardware configuration, model content, file format, type of data being loaded, and file location.


Figure 2. Load Data Browser


Figure 3. Memory Monitoring
HWC Language
The new HWC (HyperWorks Command) language allows you to record and playback workflows in HyperView. Tasks performed in the browser, panels or graphics area are recorded in a simple and intuitive syntax in the command history below the panel.

The command line supports auto-completion and interactive help and allows easy modification and re-execution of commands. Default arguments of frequently used commands can be defined, and basic framework commands are recorded. Menu buttons to execute HWC files can be created via preference files and an interface is provided to execute HWC commands from Tcl scripts.

This first release supports the commands required for model setup and covers attributes, sets, sections, scalar-, vector- and tensor-results, views, animation, tracking systems, annotations and image/video/H3D export.



Figure 4. HWC Console
APIs to Find and View Hot Spots
A new list of APIs that can work with the contour plot in the graphics screen and find the critical regions (Hot Spots) based on a list of filtering rules or criteria is available. The filtering rules are available for selection set, ignoring elements by config, value threshold, setting minimum separation during search and specify the number of extreme values, top or bottom to be listed.


Figure 5. Find and Show Hot Spots

Further, to view these hot spots, view modes that can display the hot spots in the perspective of entire assembly or the component or only the region around the hot spot location are available. More customization APIs are available to affect the behavior of notes, displayed components, transparency and highlighted region sizes. Detailed information on the list of APIs and how to use them can be found in the Help documentation.

Realistic Rendering
A new graphics rendering mode called Realistic Rendering is added in HyperView. It is based off a physically based rendering model approach that allows for the flow of light to be rendered more accurately as it would be in the real world. Additionally, you can apply materials from a predefined library or define your own custom materials for rendering various components in your model. Export of the physically based rendering (PBR) mode materials to H3D is supported.


Figure 6. Standard graphics rendering mode vs. Realistic Rendering mode (with Environment Map applied)

Enhancements

Graphical Performance Improvement for Models with a Large Number of Components
Graphic rendering performance when animating or manipulating model with a very large number of components has been improved. Shown below is a comparison of frame rates before and after the change for various scenarios.

Model used: 10500 comps/8.6 million elements/101 steps

System info: Linux RHEL7.4



Figure 7. Performance Improvement (fps) for various scenarios
Image Capture Performance Upgrades
The technology used for capturing static and moving images is upgraded. This provides tremendous improvements in the speed of capturing videos and reduction in the memory consumption during this operation. The benefit will be even more pronounced during publishing and Report creation processes.


Figure 8. Image Capture Performance Improvements
Apply style to selected HyperView Windows
Style attributes can now be applied from source model to selected HyperView windows in a session, in addition to previously supported options of current window, current page or all pages. A new context menu option and window selector GUI is added to facilitate this operation.


Figure 9. Apply style on selected windows
UTF-8 Character support in HyperView Graphics
Rendering of UTF-8 characters in the HyperView graphics area is now supported. This will allow the display of text from several languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean etc.
New color picker for setting component colors
New color picker with full set of RGB colors is now available in HyperView for setting component colors. The palette is also available for setting contour legend colors.


Figure 10. Updated Color Picker
Other Enhancements
  • Global option to convert all 2nd order elements in model into 1st order elements is available. This is to be used only under special circumstances. For example, an analysis is modeled with 2nd order elements but solver results are available only on corner nodes. In such cases, the animation might appear distorted due to absence of results on mid-side nodes and hence using this option is recommended.


    Figure 11. Global Option
  • A new preference statement *DefaultMouseSettings() is added to control default mouse settings in HyperView. Set this preference statement to “HWX” to use next generation HyperWorks mouse controls, especially for model manipulation. Set it to “OFF” or remove the statement for default HyperView mouse controls. Note that in the case of next generation HyperWorks settings, not all options are currently available. Also, certain functions such as window selection or context menu are assigned to different buttons.


    Figure 12. Next Generation HyperWorks Mouse Settings
  • Auto-Start and Stop of animation during dynamic view manipulation: To facilitate smoother view manipulation, animation will be paused when user tries to manipulate the model view in HyperView (rotate, pan or zoom) using mouse or keyboard.
  • Assembly Hierarchy will now be displayed in the Model View of the HyperView Results Browser. This was previously removed in 2019 in favor of a flat list in Model View and separate Assembly Hierarchy view.

Resolved Issues

  • Increased memory usage when animating a large transient (crash) simulation with section cut.
  • Strange graphical artifacts seen on very large session files on Linux machines with NVIDIA graphics cards.
  • Drop in animation speed on certain pages of a very large session file containing hundreds of HyperView windows.
  • Model is hidden when clicking isolate button in browser without selecting any component.
  • Eroded elements get displayed during animation of certain Femzip result files.
  • Escape key to exit Show/hide/isolate function does not work.
  • Note shows incorrect max contour value when querying node with multiple values.
  • Note shows incorrect value when querying contour data using multiplier.
  • Application error on doing certain operations after creating streamlines and tracers.
  • Application crash when exporting H3D of model with contoured streamlines.
  • Slight lag in restoring component colors to default using Entity attributes panel.
  • Vectors not plotted on mid-side nodes of 2nd order elements in Ansys result file.
  • Static min-max result and dynamic min-max measures are not visible in browser on H3D import.
  • FE style column in browser is not updated when the component attributes are changed through the Visualization toolbar.
  • Hide option in context menu is not active when multiple measure groups or sets are selected.
  • Ellipsoids in MBD models are not transformed correctly for exported H3D with results but no animation.
  • Original data displayed in query panel does not follow the same numeric format as the contour data.
  • Setting certain apply style options such as sets clear the contents of the target window HyperView Results Browser.
  • Note attached to a node shared by multiple components, some of which are masked, returns value from masked component.
  • Error message does not indicate that failure to load file is due to a permissions issue.
  • By Contour Top N selection method returns wrong node ID when applying on a top/bottom layer contour.
  • Contour controller error message when opening session file containing only model.
  • Image plane alignment changes when reopening saved session.
  • Deformed panel settings are not copied when copy/pasting window with modal animation.
  • Legend header and footer do not update after changing it through edit legend dialog.
  • By Contour “Top N” selection ignores displayed filter and finds nodes masked by section cut.
  • By Contour selection method ignores midside nodes of second order elements.
  • Legend max and min values do not get applied on import of predefined legend file.
  • Mask by window masks solid elements outside the window when contour is displayed.
  • Delete, swap and copy/paste pages or replace reports with HyperView windows and active result browser could cause crashes.
  • Multiple sync groups created via Tcl interface are not working as intended.
  • Overlaying multiple reports using the "sessionhandle ApplyReport" command does not overlay based on report name.
  • Nested preference statement *BrowserContextMenuItem failed to show main menu browser items.
  • The Tcl command "tk_getOpenFile -multiple 1" sometimes returns duplicate or empty paths.
  • Creating images using "Capture Graphics Area "was broken for TableView and TextView.
  • Exported images of HyperGraph windows created using a measure from a linear static model are completely black.

Solver Interfaces

PAM-CRASH 2G Interface

Resolved Issues
  • Fixed reader crashes ERFH5, HWASCII result files.
  • Fixed input reader crashes with input files having entities like Includes, Modules.

Abaqus Interface

Enhancements
  • HyperView now supports reading and post-processing of Abaqus 2020 ODB files.

LS-DYNA Interface

Resolved Issues
  • Correction made in reading solver input deck as model, in which *INLCUDE_TRANSFORM is used with the same include file and with ID offsets.
  • Correction made in reading d3plot when *MAT_ADD_THERMAL_EXPANSION is used.
  • Correction made in reading d3plot when *MSSCL=2 in *DATABASE_EXTENT_BINARY.

ANSYS Interface

Enhancements
  • HyperView now supports ANSYS version 2019 R2 result files (normal and compressed).