Element Capping and Outline
The portion of the Cut Section menu controls 2D element capping properties as well as cut section outlining. Various controls for thickness and colour are available for both, as shown in the figure below. Default settings are shown here:
Element Capping
Thickness
There are controls to determine whether or not 2D elements (shells and contact segments) have "caps" drawn where they are cut. A "cap" is a thick line where each 2D element is cut, and it will show the current visual properties of the element, as in the example below:
This example shows an eigenvalue analysis of a hollow box of shells. A cut section of constant Z has been applied half way along, and contours of Y displacement drawn. The "capping" of the shells shows the displacement around the cut section.
The default thickness of 2D element caps is a fixed thickness, which can be adjusted. In this case a value of 10.0 gives a satisfactory plot.
In some cases, you may wish to plot the true thickness of the shells and this option can be selected. The displayed thickness of the shells may be scaled by changing the value of 1.00 to a larger or smaller value. By default, the true thickness is taken as the shell thickness at state 1 and is not updated for other states. If there is a requirement to update the true thickness at each state, then this option can be selected.
In some cases, you may wish to plot the true thickness constant from the ZTF file which holds the thickness from *PART_COMPOSITE or *ELEMENT_SHELL_THICKNESS or *SECTION_SHELL card. This value would be constant for all the states. True thickness constant option is many times faster than true thickness option.
If is selected used then shells with a *PART_CONTACT card will use the following as their capping thickness:
- If OPTT is non-zero that is used verbatim
else - If SFT is non-zero then (SFT * true shell thickness) is used
If neither OPTT nor SFT are defined, or the shell's part is not _CONTACT, the unfactored true thickness is used.
Colour
This next example demonstrates the usage of the capping colour controls. This allows for easier visualisation of the cut edges. There is a choice to choose between a core/custom colour or "Default". By choosing "Default", the default entity colour will be used in Shaded, SI and CT. Below is an example comparing the difference between "Default" (left) and selecting the colour yellow (right) for shaded plots.
Below is an example comparing the difference between "Default" (left) and selecting the colour yellow (right) for a SI plot.
Cut Outline
Thickness and Colour
The cut outline can be controlled to make it easier to see the where the cut is applied. This is an alternative to controlling the colour of the element capping, since element capping is only available for 2D elements. The cut outline is currently available for shells, thick shells and solids. It can be toggled on and off and a thickness integer value between 1 (pixel) and 10 (pixels) can be applied. Core and custom colours can be applied. Shown below is an example of a cut solid element with a custom yellow outline and thickness value of 5 pixels.
