The analysis type determines the results available for you to examine after solution. For example, in a structural analysis, you may be interested in equivalent stress results or maximum shear results, while in a thermal analysis, you may be interested in temperature or total heat flux. The Results section lists various results available to you for postprocessing.
To add result objects in the Mechanical application:
Highlight a Solution object in the tree.
Select the appropriate result from the Solution Context Tab or use the right-mouse click option.
To review results in the Mechanical application:
Click a result object in the tree.
After the solution has been calculated, you can review and interpret the results in the following ways:
Contour results - Displays a contour plot of a result such as stress over geometry.
Vector Plots - Displays certain results in the form of vectors (arrows).
Probes - Displays a result at a single time point, or as a variation over time, using a graph and a table.
Charts - Displays different results over time, or displays one result against another result, for example, force vs. displacement.
Animation - Animates the variation of results over geometry including the deformation of the structure.
Stress Tool - to evaluate a design using various failure theories.
Fatigue Tool - to perform advanced life prediction calculations.
Contact Tool - to review contact region behavior in complex assemblies.
Beam Tool - to evaluate stresses in line body representations.
Note: Displacements of rigid bodies are shown correctly in transient structural and rigid dynamics analyses. If rigid bodies are used in other analyses such as static structural or modal analyses, the results are correct, but the graphics will not show the deformed configuration of the rigid bodies in either the result plots or animation.
Note: If you resume a Mechanical model from a project or an archive that does not contain result files, then results in the Solution tree can display contours but restrictions apply:
The result object cannot show a deformed shape; that is, the node-based displacements are not available to deform the mesh.
The result object cannot animate.
Contours are not available for harmonic results that depend upon both real and imaginary result sets.
See the Results section for more references on results.