/ESHAPE
/ESHAPE, SCALE, KEY
Displays elements with shapes determined from the real constants,
section definition, or other inputs.
SCALEScaling factor:
0
—
Use simple display of line and area elements. This value is the default.
1
—
Use real constants, section definition, or other information to form a solid shape display of the applicable elements.
FAC—
Multiply certain real constants, such as thickness, by
FAC(whereFAC> 0.01) and use them to form a solid shape display of elements.KEYCurrent shell thickness key:
Notes
The /ESHAPE command allows beams, shells, current sources, and certain special-purpose elements or elements with special options to be displayed as solids with the shape determined from the real constants, section types, or other information. Elements are displayed via the EPLOT command. No checks for valid or complete input are made for the display.
Following are details about using this command with various element types:
COMBIN14, COMBIN39, and MASS21 are displayed with a graphics icon, with the offset determined by the real constants and KEYOPT settings.
BEAM188, BEAM189, PIPE288, PIPE289 and ELBOW290 are displayed as solids with the shape determined via the section-definition commands (SECTYPE and SECDATA). The arbitrary section option (
Subtype= ASEC) has no definite shape and appears as a thin rectangle to indicate the orientation; the thin side represents the beam Y axis and the thick (longer) side represents the Z axis. The length of thick side is determined byTKz. IfTKz= 0, the area is used to determine the length of thick side. The thin side is scaled by the fraction of the thick side, regardless ofTKy. If the offsets are defined viaCGy/CGz(SECDATA or SECOFFSET,USER,OFFSETY,OFFSETZ), they are applied to the plot without scaling. The elements are displayed with internal lines representing the cross-section mesh.Reduced-integration and lower-order shells (SHELL181 and SHELL208 with KEYOPT(3)=0) are displayed with uniform thickness, evaluated at the centroid, to reflect the element behavior.
SOLID272 and SOLID273 are displayed as solids with the shape determined via the section-definition commands (SECTYPE and SECDATA). The 2D master plane is revolved around the prescribed axis of symmetry.
PLANE182, PLANE183, PLANE222, and PLANE223 with KEYOPT(3) = 6 are displayed as 3D solids with the shape determined by nodal locations and displacements at the nodes.
Contour plots are available for these elements in postprocessing for PowerGraphics only (/GRAPHICS,POWER). To view 3D deformed shapes for the elements, issue OUTRES,MISC or OUTRES,ALL for static or transient analyses. To view 3D mode shapes for a modal or eigenvalue buckling analysis, expand the modes with element results calculation ON (
Elcalc= YES for MXPAND).SOURC36, CIRCU124, and TRANS126 elements always plot using /ESHAPE when PowerGraphics is activated (/GRAPHICS,POWER).
In most cases, /ESHAPE renders a thickness representation of your shell, plane and layered elements more readily in PowerGraphics (/GRAPHICS,POWER). This type of representation employs PowerGraphics to generate the enhanced representation, and will often provide no enhancement in Full Graphics (/GRAPHICS,FULL). This is especially true for POST1 results displays, where /ESHAPE is not supported for most element types with FULL graphics.
When PowerGraphics is active, /ESHAPE may degrade the image if adjacent elements have overlapping material, such as shell elements which are not co-planar. Additionally, if adjacent elements have different thicknesses, the polygons depicting the connectivity between the "thicker" and "thinner" elements along the shared element edges may not always be displayed.
For POST1 results displays (such as PLNSOL), the following limitations apply:
If you issue RSYS,SOLU before reviewing results for beam or pipe elements, contour plots for displacement (for example, PLNSOL,U,X and PLDISP) do not appear in the solution coordinate system when /ESHAPE is active. Instead, the contours appear in the global Cartesian coordinate system.
When shell elements are not co-planar, the resulting PLNSOL display with /ESHAPE will actually be a PLESOL display as the non-coincident pseudo-nodes are not averaged. Additionally, /ESHAPE should not be used with coincident elements because the plot may incorrectly average the displacements of the coincident elements.
When nodes are initially coincident and PowerGraphics is active, duplicate polygons are eliminated to conserve display time and disk space. The command may degrade the image if initially coincident nodes have different displacements. The tolerance for determining coincidence is 1E-9 times the model’s bounding box diagonal.
If you want to view solution results (PLNSOL, etc.) on layered elements (such as SHELL181, SOLSH190, SOLID185 Layered Solid, SOLID186 Layered Solid, SHELL208, SHELL209, SHELL281, and ELBOW290), set KEYOPT(8) = 1 for the layer elements so that the data for all layers is stored in the results file.
You can plot the through-thickness temperatures of elements SHELL131 and SHELL132 regardless of the thermal DOFs in use by issuing the PLNSOL,TEMP command (with PowerGraphics and /ESHAPE active).
The /ESHAPE,1 and /ESHAPE,
FACcommands are incompatible with the /CYCEXPAND command used in cyclic symmetry analyses.The /ESHAPE,1 command does not support velocity and acceleration results for elements PLANE182, PLANE183, PLANE222, or PLANE223 with KEYOPT(3) = 6.
For coupled-field elements PLANE222 and PLANE223 with KEYOPT(3) = 6, the /ESHAPE command can be used to visualize structural results. Non-structural results visualization is limited to gradient and flux displays supported with PowerGraphics.
This command is valid in any processor.