System Coupling supports both surface and volume meshes with mid-side nodes, providing improved interpolation for Mechanical cases with quadratic element meshes. Previously, Mechanical participants dropped mid-side mesh nodes and sent only corner nodes to System Coupling. Beginning in the 2020 R2 release, Mechanical sends mid-side nodes to System Coupling by default for the following types of cases:
New coupled analyses created with the 2020 R2 or later release
Unsolved existing coupled analyses created with a pre-2020 R2 release
For instructions on other scenarios, see:
Applying Mid-Side Nodes to Existing Solved Cases
To apply the new feature to existing cases that were created with an earlier release and that have already been solved using only the corner nodes, perform the following steps:
Clear coupled analysis solution data.
Save the Mechanical project.
Regenerate Mechanical's solver file.
Re-solve the coupled analysis.
Reverting to the Use of Corner Nodes
To revert to Mechanical's previous behavior of sending only corner nodes to System Coupling, perform the following steps:
Load the case into Mechanical.
Note: If the case has already been solved using the new functionality, perform the steps described in above topic, Applying Mid-Side Nodes to Existing Solved Cases .
Open the Commands (APDL) object, using either of the following methods:
On the Home tab, Insert group, select Commands.
In the Outline, right-click the A5 analysis environment object and select > .
The Commands (APDL) object is added to the Outline tree and the corresponding Worksheet opens. The text displayed indicates that the command will be placed in the /SOLU section of the .dat file, so will be executed just prior to the SOLVE command.
In the Worksheet, enter the following command snippet:
SCOPT,,NOFrom the File tab, select Save Project.
When the solution is run, Mechanical will run the command snippet and revert to sending only linear meshes and data to System Coupling, even when it is using quadratic meshes in its own solution.