Spotwelds

Spotwelds

Spotweld solids, beams and clusters are a special case as they are solid and beam elements which can also have spotweld data components plotted on them.

When plotting these spotweld types the user can select how the spotwelds elements are treated and what results are displayed on them..

Never draw as structural elements

With this option elements that are spotweld beams and solids are always treated as though they are spotwelds and are ignored for things like contouring and min-max values of any non spotweld data component. If for example you do a SI plot of Von-Mises stress then any spotweld solids will be drawn as uncontoured.

Draw as structural if welds are turned off.

With this setting spotweld beams and solids are treated as spotwelds and are ignored for things like contouring and min-max values if the entity switch for spotwelds is turned on.

If for example you do a SI plot of Von-Mises stress and the entity switch for spotweld solids is on then any spotweld solids will be drawn as uncontoured. If the switch is turned off then the spotwelds solids will be treated as normal elements and contoured.

Always draw as structural elements.

This is the opposite of (1). With this option the spotweld beams and solids are always treated as though they are normal structural elements and will be included in data plots for structural data components. If a spotweld data component is plotted then the spotweld beams and solids will be uncontoured but any generalized or constrained welds will still be contoured as normal.