Define Free-shape Design Regions
Ideally, free-shape design regions should be selected where it can be assumed that the shape of the structure is most sensitive to the concerned responses.
For example, it would be appropriate to select grids in a high stress region when the objective is to reduce stress.
Free-shape design regions should be defined at different locations on the structure where it is desired for the shape to change independently. For solid structures, feature lines often define natural boundaries for free-shape design regions. Containing any feature lines inside a free-shape design region should be avoided unless the intention is to smooth the feature lines during an optimization. Likewise for a shell structure, sharp corners should not be contained inside a free-shape design region unless the intention is to smooth out such corners.
| (1) | (2) | (3) | (4) | (5) | (6) | (7) | (8) | (9) | (10) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GRID | GID1 | GID2 | GID3 | GID4 | GID5 | GID6 | GID7 | ||
| GID8 | GID9 | etc | etc | ||||||
Figure 1.
Figure 2.