Once you are neck deep in a study it is painful to consider washing all the setup and starting over in order to modify a geometric model.

Problem

I was working with a product that included a cylinder which received a load on it’s surface, and transmitted it to a block by a contact on the same surface. This can be problematic for reasons that I will get into in another article.

Autodesk Sim 360 Setup

After using 3 Autodesk linear static stress solutions in tandem during the study, I settled in on Autodesk Sim 360 in order to finalize the reporting. During the process leading up to this, I studied the affects of applying the loads, constraints,  and contacts in different strategies. I determined that I really needed to split the cylinder face into 3 parts, one for the contact, and 2 for the loads.

Solution

Autodesk Sim 360 Edit DesignDid you know you can perform your setup, and drop back to edit the geometry without having to start over. In fact the complete setup in Sim 360 is still in tact except features that were assigned to the geometries that you need to edit. You can edit, simplify, mesh, and solve in the same interface.

 

Use the Ribbon and navigate to the Edit Design environment.

Autodesk Sim 360 Edit Design Work Plane    Autodesk Sim 360 Edit Design Split Face

In this case I created 2 offset work planes with 0mm offset, and then used the Split Face tool to cut the faces into appropriate sections. Once the edits are completed, simply pick the Return button to return to the Setup environment where the affected loads and contacts can be revised.  No geometry to re-import; no loss of setup or corruption. The changes are incorporated into the same dataset. The entire change took no more than 5 minutes and was constrained to the current study scenario. Then it’s simple to remesh and send to the cloud to resolve with the push of a button. If anything went sour, I can always back up to a previous revision which is managed by Sim 360.

Autodesk Sim 360 Setup Edit Contacts   Autodesk Sim 360 Setup Edit Loads

Note: The changes I made here to the geometry was constrained to the particular study scenario I was working with because of how I cloned the study. I believe if I had used the alternate option to share the model, when the edits were completed, they would have permeated all the scenarios globally. Those setups would have to be reviewed and resolved, but the edits would have only had to be performed once which is a great option when considering the potential loss of time in order to start over with other software. 

Autodesk Sim 360 Results