FEM CalculiX Cantilever 3D

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Revision as of 20:31, 2 February 2016 by Berndhahnebach (talk | contribs)
Tutorial
Topic
{{{Topic}}}
Level
Beginner
Time to complete
10 minutes
Authors
Bernd
FreeCAD version
0.16.6377 or above
Example files
See also
None

Introduction

! DO NOT TRANSLATE AT THE MOMENT ! This example is meant to show how an simple Finite Element Analysis done by the FEM_Module looks like. The results could be visualized. Furthermore with the example file it is easy to check if the FEM module is set up properly.

Requirements

  • FCVersion=0.16.6377 or above.
  • This could be checked at the menu Help --> about FreeCAD --> Revisionnumber which has to be bigger than 6377
  • No external software is needed for loading the example file, viewing the mesh and geometry as well as for visualizing the results.


Example File

Load Start Workbench

  1. Start FreeCAD
  2. The Start Workbench should be loaded

Load the example file

  1. Go to the example projects and click on "Load an FEM analysis example"
  2. If due to further operations some geometry, constraints or the results are broken or deleted just repeat the steps above.

Activate the analysis container

  1. To work with an analysis the analysis has to be activated.
  2. In tree view right click on the analysis --> activate analysis

Analysis container and its objects

  1. Next step will be to give an material to our model


Constraints

from here still ToDO

  1. What needed next is to add some fixed and force constraints to our model.

FEM Mesh

  1. The two possibilities by either the build in mesher Netgen and the external mesher GMSH will be shown in this tutorial. There are various
Netgen
  1. Select the shape you wish to mesh, in this case our Cube and click on File:Fem FemMesh.svg Create FEM mesh.
GMSH
  1. If FreeCADs build in mesher Netgen is not available the usage of Macro_GMSH is recommended, and is used for this example.

Running the Solver

  1. Select the solver object of the analysis in tree view and press File:Fem QuickAnalysis.svg Quick Analysis from the icon tool bar
  2. The analysis will be made and the result object should be created.

Analyzing Results

  1. Select File:Fem Result.svg Show result
  2. Choose among the different Result types to view the results
  3. The slider at the bottom can be used to alter the mesh to view the deformation in a simplified manner
  4. To remove the results select File:Fem PurgeResults.png Purge results

We are now finished with the basic workflow for the FEM Module.