Basic Animation the "Current State" and Selecting States
Basic animation, the "current state", and selecting states.
The programme maintains the concept of a "current state" for each window, which is that being displayed at the moment. When an animation is halted the state at which it stops becomes the current state, and any state selected explicitly by the user subsequently becomes the current state in its place.
Each graphics window is independent, and each may show different states. To provide both independent and collective control the following mechanisms are used:
The master slider applies to all windows for which its tabs are active.
Moving this slider to a new state will cause all these windows to jump
to this state.
PLAY
makes all selected windows animate, and
halts
them.
This range of this slider is 0 to the highest state in all models, and it can be the case that it permits selection of a state that doesn't exist in a given model. Selecting such a state is legal and leaves the window(s) of that model unchanged.
The local state slider and associated controls in the button bar at the top of each graphics window applies to this window only .
Moving the slider, or using , etc, lets you move between the animation states currently defined for this window.
By default all states in a model are selected for animation; but this can be limited to restricted states, or extra states can be displayed by interpolation.
Therefore these controls move between what has been selected for this window (or for modal analyses through the +/- 180 degree phase angle for the current modeshape).
All animation and static state selection is carried out in the State Display box. Its basic controls are described here, with more detail in the following sections.
To start animating
To initiate an animation simply press
PLAY
,
and to halt it press
STOP
.
By default all states in the model will be animated at full speed in the current display mode. More information on animation is given in Animation How to display, control, store and retrieve animation sequences .
To select an explicit state by number |
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| Either: | Move the slider to the state you want, or use the arrows at its ends to scroll it left or right. When you release the mouse button the selected state becomes current and will be drawn. |
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Type an explicit state number into the State: box. This will become the current state and will be drawn. |
To select an explicit state by time
Type the required time into the Time: box. If a state with that time exists it will be used, otherwise the state with the closest time after that you have specified is used. This becomes the current state and is drawn.
The programme "knows" about all states in a file, they are scanned as part of the initialisation process, and it can jump directly to any state. Data required for plotting are read in selectively on as "as needed" basis.
States at interpolated timesThe current (static) state shown in this box cannot be at an interpolated time between two explicit states: defining an intermediate time will result in the next highest state being used. However the sliders and state manipulation controls in each window can be used to move between interpolated states. |
For more information on interpolation see SET_STATES > Selecting the States to Be Animated.
Selecting and animating mode-shapes.
Most analyses are transient, and each state will show successive times. Modal (eigenvalue) analyses are performed in the frequency domain, and each "state" is a different modeshape at some frequency.
D3PLOT operates in much the same way except that:
- The "States" slider now moves between modeshapes (state 1 = mode 1, etc)
- Animation is performed by oscillating a single state through +/- 180 degrees
- The slider at the top of each window moves through the +/- 180 deg cycle.
Using keyboard "short cut" keys to cycle through states
You can use the following keyboard keys to select states:
<-- and --> arrow keys step backwards and forwards respectively. They loop round when they reach the limits of their respective directions.
<Home> jumps to the first state
<End> jumps to the last state
As with all short cut keys the windows upon which they act are determined as follows:
- If the mouse is in a graphics window then they act only upon that window.
- If the mouse is in some other menu window then they act upon all active graphics windows.
To cycle through animation frames , as opposed to states, use <shift> + left/right arrow keys. In most cases the only difference will be in data-bearing plots with contour levels set to "auto":
- Cycling through states will autoscale each image.
- Cycling through frames will use the envelope of contour values for the whole animation.
The FILE > popup menu options |
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You can manage many aspects of your database using the FILE > popup menu.
Some of these options can only apply to one model at a time. When this
is the case the operation will be applied to the first active model as
selected by the
tabs in this
panel.
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- List all states in the file
If you think that you cannot see all the states that should be there you should consider the following possible reasons:
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- Scan the file for any new states. If your analysis is still running D3PLOT will not know about any states that may have been written since its initial scan of the file. will search the file for new states and update the internal tables to show them. |
| - Displaying and managing the results storage database D3PLOT loads results from file on as "as needed" basis, and may supersede unwanted results in memory to save space. The process is automatic and can normally be ignored, however users with big models may need to intervene to economise on memory usage. |
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- Jumping over gaps in family member sequence Sometimes the family member sequence <name>.ptf , <name>.ptf01 , ... <name>.ptfnn may contain gaps. This can be due to deliberate deletion of intermediate members to save disk space, or because Ansys LS-DYNA has skipped a member. D3PLOT will skip over < > gaps before giving up its search for new members and deciding that it has reached the end of the file family. < > may be zero (no gaps) or any positive integer, but bear in mind that large values will slow down disk scanning as many non-existent files are searched for. If you change this value the family will be re-scanned automatically to detect any new members this may have made visible. |
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- Setting
the file family size to use.
The file family size from Ansys LS-DYNA defaults to 7MBytes, but is sometimes set to some other value (using the X= parameter on the input line). D3PLOT can determine the member size of each family automatically by taking the larger of the first two members rounded up to the nearest Mbyte. However you can override this value if, for some reason, the automatic method does not give the correct answer. Doing so causes the file family to be re-scanned automatically to detect any changes. Setting the value to zero effectively returns it to "automatic" mode. |
| - Unscrambling endian-swapped titlesIf the analysis title appears to have every 4 letters reversed (ie ABCDEFGH = DCBAHGFE) then it has probably been (incorrectly) endian-swapped by your version of Ansys LS-DYNA. You can correct this by swapping between reversed and normal modes. |
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Setting these parameters externally
The parameters on this page may be set externally (or in the Shell) with the following environment variables: |
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setenv FILE_SKIP 10
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(Unix, C shell syntax)
(Unix, Bourne/Korn shell syntax) |
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setenv FAM_SIZE 7
FAM_SIZE=0; export FAM_SIZE |
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setenv SWAP_LSTC_TITLE true
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Windows users may set these variables in the System , Environment panel.
The Animation options popup menu |
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The
ANIM >
popup menu provides access to
the options which control the extent, speed, and many other attributes of
animation.
These, and many other aspects of animation, are described in Animation How to Display, Control, Store and Retrieve Animation Sequences. |
The drawing vs. state selection menu. |
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Note that can be used to scroll through (visually) an animation, but the same effect is achieved more easily using the frame slider bar on top of the graphics window: see Animation How to Display, Control, Store and Retrieve Animation Sequences .
The meaning of fake state #0You may have noticed in some of the examples above that there is a state #0. This is a special state assembled within D3PLOT from the undeformed geometry with all displacements, stresses, etc set to zero. It is given the time 0.0. It exists for the following reasons: |
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State #0 is ignored for purposes other than static plotting: it cannot be included in an animation, or used for time-history output |
Support for analyses using "Adaptive Remeshing"The adaptive remeshing facility in Ansys LS-DYNA, used primarily for metal-forming, generates output files in a sequence that is different to those from "normal" analyses. Each remesh effectively constitutes a new analysis in which the quantity (and labelling) of nodes and elements in the remeshed parts will have changed. A new file family is generated at each remesh, and Ansys LS-DYNA flags these by appending "aa", "ab", etc to the output filenames for the 1st, 2nd, and so on families. D3PLOT is able to detect this, so long as you give the name of the original analysis as the input file, and will automatically scan all the file families extracting their times, so that remeshed states are detected and made available. Thereafter you may use the programme in the usual fashion: selecting a new state automatically uses results from the correct file family, and capabilities such as animation work in the normal way. |
| There are a few minor limitations: |
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