ANSYS Workbench v8.0  Release Note
ANSYS Workbench
ANSYS Workbench
" FE Modeler added to Workbench
" FE Modeler added to Workbench
ANSYS Workbench
A finite element editor, FE Modeler, has been added as another task
module to the ANSYS Workbench. With FE Modeler, users can translate
" FE Modeler
a NASTRAN bulk data file or data from a Design Simulation environment
into an ANSYS input file. Graphical and tabular representations are
" Save Archive object
included for elements, element types, bodies, materials, and thicknesses.
" Analysis license choice
By navigating through these representations, users can select items to
form components that are reflected in the ANSYS input file. An option has
been added to the Project Page that allows users to transfer data from
selected Design Simulation environments to FE Modeler.
" Save As/Archive Object from Project Page
" Save As/Archive Object from Project Page
DesignModeler
A  snapshot copy of the current status of an agdb, dsdb, or dxdb file can
now be saved from the Project Page. This snapshot copy is independent of
" Body attribute Support the project and does not change the project hierarchy in any way.
" Box select
" Quick Cut / Copy
" Named selection
" Analysis license choice
" Analysis license choice
" Edit Dimension
A Software licensing link has been added to the Start Page that allows
" Plane transforms logic
users to select an analysis license for using Design Simulation, ANSYS,
or FE Modeler in a Workbench session.
" Sketch instancing
" Joint feature
" Enclosure feature
" Iges Export
DesignSimulation
DesignModeler
DesignModeler
" Body Attribute support
" Body Attribute support
" Contact
New in release 8.0 is support for surface thickness and material properties
" Meshing
from other CAD programs.
" Environment
" Results
" Box Select
" Box Select
" Worksheet
The Selection Toolbar includes a Select Mode button that allows you to
select items through the Single Select or Box Select dropdown menu
" Graphic User Interface
options. The Box Select filters allow you to choose all filtered items by
" Miscellaneous
dragging a selection box. When the dragging is from left to right, items
completely enclosed in the box are selected. When the dragging is from
the right to the left, items completely and partially enclosed in the box are
selected.
DesignXplorer
" Quick Cut / Copy
" Quick Cut / Copy
" Design optimisation
When in Sketching Mode, and in general selection state, once you have
" Min/Max optimisation
selected any edges, Cut and Copy now appear in the right mouse button
" Number of sample designs
menu. If you choose one of these, it is just as though you changed to the
Modify group (if necessary), and selected either Cut or Copy in the toolbox,
" Scoped results
with the preselected edges.
" Named Selection
" Named Selection
The Named Selection feature allows you to create named selections that
can be transferred to Design Simulation. You can select any combination
of 3D entities, including Point feature points.
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ANSYS Workbench v8.0  Release Note
" Edit Dimension Name/Value
" Edit Dimension Name/Value
With the Edit Dimension Name/Value, you can quickly edit a dimension's
name and value by selecting the dimension, then clicking the right mouse
button and choosing the Edit Name/Value option.
" Sketch instancing
" Sketch instancing
Sketch Instances allow you to place copies of existing sketches in other
planes. The edges in a sketch are fixed just like a plane boundary and
cannot be moved, edited, or deleted by normal sketch operations. When
changes are made in a base sketch, its instances will be automatically
updated to match it when a Generate is done. A sketch instance can be
used just like normal sketches for creating other features.
" Plane tranforms logic
" Plane tranforms logic
For release 8.0, definitions of Planes have been made more flexible. While
each plane type has its own set of required information, the transform logic
and prompts are now identical for all plane types.
" Joint feature
" Joint feature
The Joint feature is a tool used to join surface bodies together so that their
contact regions will be treated as shared topology when meshed in Design
Simulation. The feature takes two surface bodies as input, and then
imprints edges on both bodies where they make contact. There is no
restriction on the types of bodies you may select; both active and frozen
body selections are permitted.
" Enclosure feature
" Enclosure feature
The Enclosure feature is a tool, found in the Tools menu, used to enclose
the bodies of a model so that the material enclosing the bodies can be
assigned to something such as a gas or fluid in Design Simulation. The
feature takes either all the bodies or selected bodies of the model as input,
creates a frozen enclosure body around those bodies, and then cuts the
bodies out of the enclosure. All types of bodies will be enclosed but only
solid bodies will be cut out of the enclosure. The resultant enclosure bodies
are assigned a  Field material. This means that the enclosure bodies will
appear as having  Field material when brought into Design Simulation.
These additional properties allow you to control the behaviour of the
feature using one of six additional properties: shape, cylinder alignment,
user-defined body, cushion, target bodies, bodies, and merge parts.
" IGES export
" IGES export
IGES Export allows you to export solids or trimmed surfaces when
exporting a model to an IGES file. The default is solids.
Design Simulation
Design Simulation
" Contact Enhancements
" Contact Enhancements
The following contact enhancements have been added at release 8.0:
f& Surface Body Contact. Prior to release 8.0, contact could only be
scoped to faces of solid bodies. Now, contact can be scoped to
surface body edges and faces as well. The new contact features are
useful for joining together surface body assemblies, solid-surface
assemblies, or to model edge welds on solid assemblies.
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ANSYS Workbench v8.0  Release Note
f& Specifying Auto Detection Type. Users can now specify the type of
contact auto detection. By default, face-to-face auto detection occurs.
Settings are now included in the Details View that enable choosing
any combination of face-to-face, face-to-edge, or edge-to-edge
detection. Users can also specify the priority of the contact auto
detection settings. This is useful for very large models where the
number of contact regions can become overwhelming. Setting a
priority in this situation will lessen the number of contact regions.
f& Search Direction for Shell Contact. For contact or target geometry
that is scoped to a surface body edge, users can specify the search
direction for contact using a new Search Direction advanced control.
f& Direct Entry of Tolerance Value. Users can now adjust the contact
detection tolerance in the Details View by either typing a Tolerance
Value or using the Tolerance Slider. Also, a visual enhancement has
been added in the form of a circle that appears at the cursor location
whenever a Contact branch is selected in the tree.
f& Specifying Pinball Region. An advanced contact option has been
added that allows users to specify the contact search radius,
commonly referred to as the pinball region. Examples are large gaps
that could result from modeling the midsurface of a shell (depending
on the shell thickness), or a large deflection problem where a
considerable pinball region is required because of possibly large
amounts of penetration. Options are a Program Controlled pinball
region setting and a Radius setting. The pinball radius for the contact
pair is shown graphically as a sphere located at the annotation anchor
on the contact region. The annotation anchor can be moved to any
point on the contact region, providing the user with a visual aid in
verifying an appropriate pinball radius.
f& Highlighting Contact Regions. When a contact region is selected in
the tree, the corresponding bodies along with source and target
entities are graphically highlighted. The highlighting feature may be
disabled through a context menu.
f& Identifying Contact Regions from Body Selection. After selecting
one or more vertices, edges, faces, or bodies, users can now identify
all contact regions associated with the bodies by choosing Contacts
for Selected Bodies from the context menu (right mouse click in the
Geometry window). The associated contact regions are displayed
graphically and selected in the tree.
f& Legend Labels for Contact Status Results. The legend for Contact
Status result contours now includes the labels Far, Near, Sliding, and
Sticking adjacent to the corresponding colours.
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ANSYS Workbench v8.0  Release Note
" Meshing Enhancements
" Meshing Enhancements
The following meshing enhancements have been added at release 8.0:
f& Advanced Structural Meshing Product. A Hex Dominant option has
been added to the Element Shape Control, allowing an unstructured
hex mesh to be applied to solid bodies. Hex dominant meshing offers
benefits mainly when meshing bodies with large amounts of interior
volume, or bodies that transition from sweepable parts. It offers
minimal benefits when meshing thin complex parts (like a cellular
phone case) or when meshing sweepable bodies that are
decomposed to multiple sweepable bodies.
f& Higher/Lower Order Mesh Element Switch. Another Advanced
global meshing option was added in the Details View that allows
users to specify solid elements to be higher order elements, or lower
order elements. A Program Chosen option is also available that
automatically generates lower order elements for surface and line
bodies, and higher order elements for solid bodies. This feature is
useful for field simulations or for highly nonlinear analyses, where
lower order elements perform well and result in fewer degrees of
freedom.
f& Meshing With Generic Elements. The mesh can now be exported to
ANSYS using generic elements that encode only shape and
connectivity information. Once in ANSYS, users can replace the
generic elements by others appropriate to the analyses performed in
ANSYS. This is of value to users who wish to take advantage of the
meshing capability afforded by Design Simulation to perform analyses
that are only supported in ANSYS. This feature is accessible by
creating an ANSYS input file using Tools> Write ANSYS Input File....
Generic elements will be exported whenever the Analysis Type is
Unknown in the Solution Details View.
" Environment Enhancements
" Environment Enhancements
The following environment enhancements have been added at release 8.0:
f& Pretension Bolt Load. A pretension bolt load has been added to the
available list of structural loads, for use in structural and thermal-
stress analyses. This load applies a pretension to a cylindrical
surface, typically to model a bolt under pretension. Users have a
choice of applying the load as a preload force or a preadjustment
length. When a pretension bolt load is applied, Design Simulation
runs a two load step problem where pretension loads are applied in
the first step, then are locked in the second step when the other
working loads are applied. Two reactions are reported. These
reactions can be converted to parameters.
f& Fixed Rotation Supports. Fixed surface rotation supports, fixed edge
rotation supports, and fixed vertex rotation supports are now available
that prevent flat or curved surface bodies or line bodies from rotating.
f& Compression Only Support. The capability of the Pinned Cylinder
Support has been expanded to include preventing one or more
surfaces from moving or deforming. Its name has been changed to
Compression Only Support and it is accessible in the same way as
the Pinned Cylinder Support was in previous releases except that now
it can be applied to non-cylindrical surfaces as well.
f& Support Type Modification Removed. The Type property was
removed from the Details View of support objects in the tree. Users
can no longer change a Fixed Support to a Given Displacement Load
or vice versa.
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ANSYS Workbench v8.0  Release Note
" Results Enhancements
" Results Enhancements
The following results enhancements have been added at release 8.0:
f& Weak Springs Reaction Forces Reported. When weak springs are
applied to prevent rigid body motion, whether user chosen or program
controlled, the resulting reaction forces are reported the Details View,
Environment Worksheet tab, and the Report.
f& Acceleration Graph for Harmonic Analysis Results. A graph of
acceleration vs. frequency is now available for harmonic analyses.
With this feature, users can determine the character of a transfer
function at a given point in the model and infer a scaling factor from
the transfer function.
f& Legend Labels for Shape Results. The legend for shape result
contours now includes the labels Keep, Marginal, and Remove
adjacent to the corresponding colours. Prior to release 8.0, the legend
labels were cross-reference numbers.
" GUI Enhancements
" GUI Enhancements
The following GUI enhancements have been added at release 8.0:
f& Geometry Scale Ruler. A scale ruler has been added to the Geometry
window that provides an approximate scale of the model, similar to a
scale on a geographic map. The scale ruler is a useful tool when
setting mesh sizes. Like the triad, the ruler can be toggled on or off
from the View menu or from the Standard Toolbar.
f& Context Menu for Suppression of Tree Items. Clicking the right mouse
button on several Design Simulation tree items now produces a
context menu that includes a Suppress or Unsuppress option. This
control is an alternative to setting these options in the Details View of
the items.
f& Show Undeformed Model As Translucent. The Edges drop down
menu in the Result toolbar now includes the Show Undeformed Model
option that allows contour results viewing of the deformed model
highlighted against a subdued view of the undeformed model. This
feature is particularly useful for viewing results on the interior of a
body while simultaneously viewing the undeformed version as a
reference. This feature also works with section and iso plots.
" Miscellaneous Enhancements
" Miscellaneous Enhancements
The following miscellaneous enhancements have been added at release
8.0:
f& Thermal Simulations Added For Surface and Line Bodies. At release
8.0, Design Simulation supports thermal simulations for surface and
line bodies.
f& Large Model Improvements. Several improvements have been made
to the support for large models, among them being increased speed,
applying loads, solving, memory usage, meshing, and graphics
processing.
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ANSYS Workbench v8.0  Release Note
f& Import of DesignModeler Enclosures. Any enclosures defined with a
f& Physics Type Filters. Physics Type filters have been added in the
model in DesignModeler will be imported upon attaching to Design
Details View of the Model level. These filters enable toolbar and menu
Simulation. This feature and Solution levels that releases for the
items in the Environment will be valuable in future apply only to any
chosen physics type. At external to Structural and Thermal physics
simulations where fieldsrelease 8.0, the model material are to be
types have been added. When all physics types are set to No, users
solved.
can mesh models with generic elements.
f& Load Shortcuts from Custom Location. When users choose the Export
f& Branch to Shortcut feature, an from DesignModeler. Prior to this
Filtered Import of Parameters alternate default directory is available
release, all DesignModeler parameters were imported to Design
for saving the shortcut in the event that the primary default directory is
Simulation. At Shortcuts only those DesignModeler parameters
write-protected. version 8.0, viewable in the Choose Simulation
Template wizard personal parameter original default directory in
that include the are those from the key (for example, DS) are
imported to Design Simulation.
addition to those in alternate default directory.
f& Teamcenter Engineering Interface. An interface has been established
between Design Simulation and the Teamcenter Engineering
Interface (formerly iMAN) for use with the Unigraphics plug-in on
Windows platforms.
f& Simulation Wizard Editor Available from Tools Menu. The
Simulation Wizard Editor, a standalone Windows application that
allows users to customize wizards, is now accessible from the Tools
menu in Design Simulation.
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