CL
CL
A cloud plot produces points displaying the value of the selected data component at each node. These can been drawn as a fixed size of the user's choice or proportionally to their value. This property can be set with the CONTOUR command - see DATA COMPONENTS - BASIC .
plots are a far "cheaper" way of seeing what is going on inside large solid meshes than ISO plots (or cut sections). This is because they don't have to worry about data averaging or complicated graphics, making them much faster to process.
In addition drawing "blobs" is fast in hardware, making this a quick method of displaying data from very large models.
Two data computation options are provided for element-derived data displayed in oud plots:
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Element centre
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Raw (unaveraged) element values are displayed at the element centre locations |
| Averaged at nodes | Element values are averaged at nodes, and displayed at the node locations |
In the nodally averaged case the results shown are equivalent to those seen in low resolution contouring, which has the effect of "smearing out" the peak and trough values at element centres.
Nodally-derived data is always plotted unconditionally at nodal locations and, by definition, is not averaged in any way.