Special "Entity" Types

Special "entity" types

As well as the standard node and element categories, familiar in other contexts, you can select the following "global" and other information for output:

GLOBAL

Refers to the whole model. Ansys LS-DYNA computes energies, rigid body velocities and mass; all of which may be output. See Global (Whole Model) Data Components for more details.

PART Refers to solid, shell, beam and thick-shell (but not spring) PART s. Ansys LS-DYNA calculates energies, velocities and mass for these; all of which may be output. See Part ("Material") Data Components for more details. SURFACE

Refers to contact surfaces. Ansys LS-DYNA writes nodal forces to the .CTF file, and D3PLOT can sum these to produce overall forces on a surface. (You can also choose to compute SURFACE A or B side forces only.) See Contact Surface Summary Components for more details.

AIRBAG Refers to "airbags" - effectively control volumes - used with the Airbag Particle method. This capability is still under development in Ansys LS-DYNA, and only a limited amount of information is available for post-processing, see Airbag Particle (ABP) Data Components for more information. GROUPS Refers to the contents of groups. Because groups can contain a mixture of entities D3PLOT will present a list of components that are valid for the selected group. If a component is selected that is not valid for all the entities in the group, only the valid entities will be listed, e.g. if the component AXIAL_FORCE is selected for a group containing both beams and shells, only the beams will be listed. See GROUPS for more information. INCLUDES

Refers to the contents of include files. Include files are similar to groups in that they can contain a mixture of entities and the same rules apply.

Output for these categories of information under ENTITY is selective: you can choose those materials or surfaces for which you want to see results.

To list complete summary information you can use the GLOBAL_SUMMARY option in the main WRITE menu instead: this summarises data for all materials or all contact surfaces, which may be more convenient.