Description of User Defined Data Components
Description of User-defined Data components
Conventional data components in D3PLOT are typically nodal displacements, velocities and accelerations, and element stresses, but are limited to what is present in the database that has been read.
User-defined components take this a stage further and allow you to define any number of new data components of the following nine types:
| Entity type | Class of data |
| Nodes | Scalar : A single value at nodes |
| Vector : A [x,y,z] data vector at nodes | |
| Solids, shells, thick shells | Scalar : A single value at elements |
| Tensor : A [xx,yy,zz,xy,yz,zx] data tensor at elements | |
| Beams | Scalar : A single value at beams |
| Vector : A [x,y,z] data vector at beams | |
| Other | Scalar : A single value at elements |
| Vector : A [x,y,z] data vector at elements | |
| Tensor : A [xx,yy,zz,xy,yz,zx] data tensor at elements |
Each user-defined component must fall into one of the nine classes in the second column above. It is not possible to mix classes in a single component.
Once a component has been defined it may be used exactly like "normal" data in any valid context within D3PLOT: data plotting, written value extraction, XY plotting, etc. Where vector and tensor components are defined, standard operations such as extracting vector direction and magnitude, or deriving sub-components such as principal or von Mises sub-components, may be performed.
A user-defined component may have its name, content or calculation method changed at any time; however it may not be swapped between classes. (Although it may be deleted and re-created as a new class.)
User-defined components are treated as "programme-wide" attributes, meaning that the same components apply to all models read into the database. If you need to apply separate components to different models it will be necessary to create new user-defined components with different attributes for the various models.
User-defined components must have names that are unique within D3PLOT. This means that not only must their names not clash with each other, but they must also not be the same as "standard" components: for example you will not be permitted to create a user-defined component called "strain".
There are four types of user-defined component in D3PLOT. The first three are created interactively or externally, and the last is used only when using the JavaScript API. In summary they are:
| (1) Read from file | Data is read from externally supplied ASCII data file(s) |
These three methods are easy to use, and in particular Simple Formulae may be created interactively. They are suitable for simple processing on a per node or element basis. |
| (2) Simple formula | Data is calculated internally from a "simple" formula using standard internal data and arithmetic. | |
| (3) JavaScript file | Data is calculated using a small JavaScript file. | |
| (4) User-defined Binary (UBIN) |
Data is created via the JavaScript API (see The JavaScript Interface ), not to be confused with method (3) above This is a much more powerful method than the three above, in that data can be extracted in an arbitrary fashion and written likewise, however it is not interactive. It is described briefly in "User Defined Binary" (UBIN) Components Generated from the JavaScript API below, and the API functions are described fully in the JavaScript API Reference Manual |
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