Compare Contacts

Use the Tie-Comparison tool to compare Tie-Contacts created in Engineering Solutions to Tie-Contacts created by the Abaqus solver.

In Engineering Solutions, Tie-Contact elements are created as RDE (Redundant Dummy Elements) elements, which correspond to Plotel elements in Nastran. The following types of elements are automatically converted to RDE elements: COUP_DIS, DCOUP3D, and KINCOUP. Once elements are converted, they are placed in the ^Master_Rods component.

  1. From the Utility Browser, Abaqus menu, click Contact Comparison.
    The Tie - Comparison Tool dialog opens.
  2. Select the component(s) containing the Tie-Contact elements to compare.
    1. Click Component.
    2. In the panel area, use the comps selector to select the components that contain the elements for which the comparison is required.
    3. Click proceed.
      The ^Master_Rods component appears under Rigid/RBE3 Elements.
  3. Create a component for the Tie-Contact elements created by the Abaqus solver.
    1. Click Create.
    2. In the Select Abaqus dat file containing tie constraints dialog, open the file that contains the constraints.
      The ^Visualization_Rods component appears under Solver Tie Elements, which contains the RDE elements that were created using the information in the constraint file.
    3. To delete a component that was added to the list of Solver Tie Elements, select the component and click Delete.
  4. Click Compare.
    The elements in the component from the Rigid/RBE3 Elements list is compared to the elements in the component from the Solve Tie Elements list. After the comparison, the corner nodes of RDE elements that have different independent nodes in the components being compared are marked.
  5. Review the comparison.
    1. To clear the corner nodes that were marked during the comparison, click Clear Nodes.
    2. To retrieve and mark the corner nodes that were a result of the comparison, click Retrieve Nodes.
    3. To compare the elements in the component from the Rigid/RBE3 Elements list to the elements in the component from the Solver Tie Elements list, and mask the elements that have the same corner node and independent nodes, click Mask Unchanged Elems.
      If you click Mask Unchanged Elems again, the masked elements are unmasked.
    4. To display the elements that are in the component from the Rigid/RBE3 Elements list but not in the component from the Solver Tie Elements list, and mask all of the other elements, click Solver Missed Elements.
      If you click Solver Missed Elements again, the elements that were masked are unmasked.