Discovery File Transfer Considerations

There are differences between Discovery and other Ansys applications in areas such as model management, material properties, solvers, results, and so on. Awareness of these differences and their potential impact on data transfer enables you to transfer Discovery files to other Ansys applications efficiently.

Manual Verification

After transferring data from Discovery to another Ansys application, you must perform manual verification to ensure the exported file is as you expected. When you transfer data from Discovery to Mechanical, you may also refer to the error log for information about data that did not transfer correctly.

Blocked and Unsupported Transfers

You need to be aware of these blocked and unsupported transfers:

  • Transfer is available in both the Explore and Refine stages. However, transfer is blocked until the physics of the simulation can be determined. For example, at least one structural or one thermal physics condition must be defined for transfer to Mechanical to be possible.
  • Transfer is blocked unless the required license is present. For example, an export from the Explore stage to Fluent requires a high fidelity fluids license. For details, see Product Licensing.
  • Transfer is blocked when Discovery is operating in read-only mode. For details about read-only mode, see Unlicensed and Underlicensed Behaviors.
  • If data does not transfer correctly, you may find more information about the failure in the error log. For example, this logging may occur if a physics condition fails to transfer. For transfers to Mechanical, see the ACT Log for details (Extensions > View Log File).
  • User-defined names for physics conditions and material assignments in Discovery are not transferred to Mechanical and Fluent. Instead, they appear as default names. For example, in Fluent, they appear as flow_n, wall_n, material_n, and so on.
  • Multiple Discovery simulations are not supported for transfer in Fluent/Mechanical. Only the current Discovery session is transferred.
  • No data related to parameters or defined variations is transferred.
  • No mesh parameter information is transferred.
  • No results data is transferred.
  • The External Flow tool doesn't require bodies to be subtracted from the Enclosure tool. Hence, when any external flow simulation modeling obstruction to flow is transferred to Fluent, the exported model does not contain the obstruction to flow features. However, if a fluid volume is created using the Enclosure tool, the obstruction flow features will be transferred to Fluent.
  • Time-dependent fluid flow simulations, which are available only in the Explore stage of Discovery, must be reset from steady state to time-dependent after they are transferred to Fluent.
  • If you transfer a file to Fluent from the Explore stage of Discovery, any solution fidelity refinements you set in the Explore stage are ignored. To be transferred to Fluent correctly, solution fidelity refinements must be set in the Refine stage before transferring the file from Explore.
  • Mechanical will have a read-only mesh as part of the import.
  • With a GLTF (*.glb) export, bolts will not be exported.

Other Considerations

Other information and behaviors that you need to be aware of include:

  • Your version of Discovery and the version of the Ansys application that you want to transfer to must be the same (for example, both applications must be version 2024 R2).
  • In Discovery, the moment condition is defined in relation to the local coordinate system. However, to transfer moment, Discovery converts and transfers it relative to the global coordinate system.
  • Physics conditions that are suppressed in a Discovery simulation are not transferred to Mechanical.
  • For details about importing a Discovery file into Mechanical, see External Study Import.

Smart Update Considerations

Considerations for the Workbench smart update associativity transfer include all other considerations, as well as:

  • No mesh is transferred, even in the Refine stage.
  • User-defined names for physics conditions are transferred to Mechanical.
  • Multiple geometries imports are not supported. For example, geometry imports inside Mechanical imported on top of the Discovery geometry will fail.