Working with the Adams Flex Toolkit GUI
Learn how to work with the Adams Flex Toolkit. For information on accessing the Adams Toolbar, see Running and Configuring Adams.
Accessing the Adams Flex Toolkit GUI
To access the Adams Flex Toolkit GUI from the Adams Toolbar in Linux:
.To access the Adams Flex toolkit GUI from the Start menu in Windows:
■From the Start menu, point to Programs, point to Adams 2024.1, and then select Adams Flex.
In Windows, to view all the information that appears in a command window, you need to enable scroll bars.
To enable scroll bars:
1. From the Start menu, point to Programs, and then select Command Prompt.
2. Hold down the right mouse button on the title bar, and select Properties from the shortcut menu.
3. On the Layout tab, change the Screen Buffer Size height from 25 to 2500.
4. Select OK, and then select to make the changes for the shortcut.
Browsing an MNF or an MD DB
Using the Adams Flex Toolkit, you can browse individual aspects of a Modal Neutral File (MNF) or an MD DB, such as the file version, units, eigenvalues, or modal shapes. You can also view the contents of the entire file. You can view the MNF or an MD DB on the screen in the MNF Browser or have Adams Flex create a series of files for later viewing. The files are stored in your working directory with a .rpt extension. The MNF toolkit uses the name of the MNF or the MD DB as the basis for the file name.
To browse an MNF or an MD DB:
1. Select the tab MNF Browser.
2. Right-click the MNF or MD DB Input File text box, and then select Select A File.
Then a file browsing dialog box appears.
3. Select the MNF or MD DB of interest, and then close the dialog box.
4. If you selected MD DB and it has more than one flexible body in it, the Index textbox will be enabled. Right-click it and select a flexible body from the popup dialog. The index of it will be input in the Index textbox.
5. From the different areas of the toolkit, select the type of information that you want displayed or select All to display the entire contents of the selected flexible body.
6. Select one of the following:
■To display the flexible body information in the MNF Browser, select 
.
.The MNF Browser appears. View the information about the flexible body by selecting the different tabs along the top of the Browser.
■To store the flexible body information in a file, select 
. A dialog box appears listing the files generated. Select Close.
. A dialog box appears listing the files generated. Select Close. Translating an MNF or an MD DB into a Matrix File
You use the Adams Flex Toolkit to translate a Modal Neutral File (MNF) or an MD DB file into an Adams Solver matrix file. Learn about Creating Matrix Files.
To translate an MNF into a matrix file:
1. Select the tab MNF -> MTX Translator.
Options appear in the Adams Flex Toolkit for translating an MNF file to a matrix file.
2. Right-click the MNF or MD DB Input File text box, and then select Select A File.
Then a file browsing dialog box appears.
3. Select the MNF of MD DB interest, and then close the dialog box.
4. If you selected MD DB and it has more than one flexible body in it, the Index textbox will be enabled. Right-click it and select a flexible body from the popup dialog. The index of it will be input in the Index textbox.
5. In the Matrix Output File text box, enter the name for the matrix file that you are creating.
6. From the pull-down menus at the left, select the units that match the units in your Adams Solver dataset that references the matrix file you are creating. The units do not have to match those in the MNF or MD DB.
7. In the Node ID List and Mode Number List text boxes, enter a list of nodes or modes that you want to include or exclude in the matrix file. Note that the list of modes to include can contain a colon (for example, 7 10 : 16) to indicate a range. Select Include or Exclude as appropriate.
8. If you are going to have Adams Flex compute all nine invariants, clear the selection of Fast Invar. If you leave Fast Invar selected, Adams Flex does not compute invariants five and nine, which provides you with a faster translation.
Selecting Fast Invar is appropriate for the default Partial Coupling formulation for flexible bodies. You can also use it with the Constant Coupling formulation or any custom combination of invariants that does not require invariants 5 and 9. Learn about Modifying the Modal Formulation.
9. Select 
.
. A command window appears as Adams Flex calculates the inertia invariants and writes the matrix file.
10. Press Enter to exit the command window.
Optimizing an MNF or an MD DB
You can optimize the flexible body in a Modal Neutral File (MNF) or an MD DB through the Adams Flex Toolkit, such as set the number of invariants stored in the flexible body or set the units in which the data is stored. The optimizations should help make the MNF smaller and more efficient. You can optimize a flexible body interactively or generate a script to run the optimization. Generating a script lets you run the optimization on another computer platform on which you have Adams installed.
The options for optimizing an MNF through the Adams Flex toolkit correspond to the parameters in the MDI_MNFWRITE_OPTIONS environment variable that controls the MNF toolkit, which you use to generate an MNF. For more information on the MDI_MNFWRITE_OPTIONS, see Setting Up Translation Options through the MNF Toolkit.
Note: | If you generate an MNF without all its invariants or geometry, it loses mass information, and you cannot generate a matrix file or MNF that contains a full set of inertia invariants from such an MNF. |
To optimize an MNF:
1. Select MNF -> MNF Optimizer.
Options appear in the Adams Flex Toolkit for optimizing an MNF.
2. Right-click the MNF or MD DB Input File text box, and then select Select A File.
Then a file browsing dialog box appears.
3. Select the MNF of MD DB of interest, and then close the dialog box.
4. If you selected MD DB and it has more than one flexible body in it, the Index textbox will be enabled. Right-click it and select a flexible body from the popup dialog. The index of it will be input in the Index textbox.
5. In the MNF or MD DB Output File text box, enter the name for the file in which to store the optimized flexible body. Please be noted that if you specify an existing MD DB, the optimized flexible body will be appended to the Database instead of overwriting it..
6. Set the options in the dialog box as explained in the table below, and then select either to perform the optimization immediately or 
to generate a script that you can run later.
to perform the optimization immediately or to generate a script that you can run later. Options for Optimizing Flexible Body
To set: | Do the following: |
|---|---|
Invariant calculations | From the Invariants pull-down menu, set which inertia invariants should be computed and stored in the MNF. You can select: ■Fast Set - If you select Fast Set, Adams Flex does not compute invariants five and nine. It corresponds to the Partial Coupling formulation mode for modal flexibility. It is also suitable for use with the Constant Coupling formulation. Only Full Coupling requires all nine invariants. Unless you think you might need the Full Coupling formulation, you can safely select Fast Set. Learn more. ■Full Set - If you select Full Set, Adams Flex computes all inertia invariants, including invariants five and nine. ■None - If you select None, Adams Flex does not perform any invariant calculations, and must compute invariants each time you save an Adams Solver dataset with a modified selection of modes or nodes. |
Units used | From the Units pull-down menu, do the following: ■To preserve the units in the original Flexible Body, select Original. If you select to preserve the units, Adams Flex performs the unit scaling as it performs different operations, which can degrade performance noticeably. ■To convert all data to Adams View internal units, which are meters, kilogram, seconds, and Newtons, select SI. |
Portability and backward compatibility | From the Formatting pull-down menu, do either of the following: ■To turn off the encoding that makes the MNF platform independent, select Platform Specific. Note: Platform Specific maintains portability between linux and Windows since these two OS support the same formatting. The encoding has some computational overhead that you may want to remove if you are not concerned about MNF portability. Thus, it is recommend to turn off encoding by specifying Platform Specific formatting. ■To keep the encoding and portability, select Standard Portable. Please be noted that MD DB will be platform-dependent no matter which option you specified here. |
Precision | From the Precision pull-down menu, set the level of precision for real numbers in the MNF: ■Double - All real data in the MNF will be stored in double-precision, typically 64-bit floating point values. ■Single - All real data in the MNF will be stored in single-precision, typically 32-bit floating point values. A single-precision MNF is nearly half the size of a double-precision MNF. A single-precision MNF does not adversely effect the accuracy of your results provided that your optimized MNF contains either Fast or Full set of inertia invariants. Some accuracy can be lost if you request None for the inertia invariant calculations in a single-precision optimized MNF. See Invariant calculations. |
Stress and strain modes | If stress (strain) recovery was requested from the finite element program when generating the MNF, the MNF contains grid point stresses (strains) for every mode. The collection of grid point stresses (strains) for a given mode is referred to as a stress (strain) mode. Typically, stress (strain) values are requested from the finite element program for a subset of nodes in the MNF. You can specify how the MNF stores stress (strain) modes, particularly for nodes where stress (strain) was not requested from the finite element program: ■Sparse - If you select Sparse, the optimized MNF only stores stresses (strains) for nodes that were retained in the optimized MNF and for which stress (strain) values existed in the original MNF. If a node had zero values for stresses (strains) in the original MNF, and that node was retained in the optimized MNF, the zeroes are written to the optimized MNF. ■Full - If you select Full, the optimized MNF stores nodal stresses and strains for all nodes that were retained in the optimized MNF. For nodes that did not have stress (strain) values, the optimized MNF stores zeroes. ■Remove zero entries - If you select Remove zero entries, the MNF only stores non-zero stresses (strains) for nodes that exist in the optimized MNF. If you have an MNF that has several zero entries in the stress (strain) modes, this option can significantly reduce the size of the MNF. |
Create a rigid-only MNF | Depending on the component and application, the size of the MNF can be very large, exceeding several gigabytes, and difficult to manage. If you are in the process of building your Adams Flex body model, you may consider treating the body as rigid until you are confident in how you have assembled your model. If temporarily using a rigid body formulation for an Adams Flex body makes sense, you can drastically reduce the size of the MNF by selecting Rigid-Only MNF. Rigid-Only MNF creates a reduced MNF that only contains enough information to build a rigidized flexible body. With this MNF, you cannot build an Adams Flex body with Constant, Partial, or Full modal formulations, but it may be convenient to work with while you are assembling and verifying your model. When you are confident with your model, you can easily replace the reduced MNF with the full MNF. |
Removal of interior geometry, such as the mated faces of two brick elements, from solid finite element models to enhance graphics performance | Select the tab Automatic (Traditional), and then select Remove Internal Solid Element Geometry. When you remove the interior geometry, the graphics performance of Adams View is greatly enhanced. When you remove both interior geometry and calculate the invariants, Adams Flex removes nodes that were only connected to the geometry that it also removed. Occasionally, the removal of the geometry may be undesirable especially when a particular interior node is to be the target for an attachment in Adams. |
Allow the MNF Optimizer to remove nodes that have modal loads defined. | Select the tab Automatic (Traditional), and then select Optimize Modal Load (MFORCE) Nodes. All modal load nodes are retained by default so that detailed MFORCE plots can be generated in View. This may result in exported MNF that are larger than expected size when modal loads are defined. If detailed MFORCE plotting is not necessary and smaller MNF is required, then you can eliminate set this option to also eliminate modal load nodes when optimizing the MNF. |
Mesh coarsening and colinear point removal to remove excessive detail from an MNF. | Select the tab Automatic (Traditional), and then select Apply Mesh Coarsening Algorithm. Set the following: ■Mesh Resolution - Slide the Mesh Resolution slider to the fraction of the total component size below which Adams Flex removes the detail of the mesh. For example, if your component is approximately 1 m long, and you select 15% mesh resolution, the coarsening results in a mesh with 15 cm-wide mesh cells. Example of Mesh Resolution. ■Face Smoothing - Slide the Face Smoothing slider to the angle between adjacent faces below which Adams Flex should merge faces. For example, if you select 15, the coarsening algorithm does not merge two faces when one face is more than 15o out of the plane of the other face. Example of Face Smoothing. ■Colinear Point Removal - Select Remove Colinear Points to control removal of nodes that are intermediate nodes on the straight edge of a face. Example of Collinear Point Removal. ■Preserve Stress and Strain Modes - Select Preserve Stress and Strain Modes to control retention of nodes that have stress or strain values. ■Retain Particular Nodes - In the Retained Node List text box, specify a list of nodes that Adams Flex should not remove during coarsening. Only visible nodes can be used to place markers, joints, and so on, onto the flexible body. Therefore, make sure to include relevant nodes. When you use mesh coarsening and also calculate the invariants, Adams Flex removes nodes that were only connected to the geometry that was removed by coarsening, which results in a great reduction in MNF size. |
Manually specify how to reduce the mesh. | Select the tab Manual, and then enter the name of the sketch file. For more information on the format of the sketch file and its impact on the mesh, see Manual Mesh Simplification. |
Generate sketch file using advanced automatic mesh coarsening method. | Select the tab Automatic (Advanced), and then set the following: ■Coarsen Mode – Select desired resolution from “Light”, “standard” or “Aggressive”. The mesh density generated with “Aggressive” is smallest. ■Edge Control – Select Edge Control to activate edge control of adjustment mesh faces and set edge angle if desired. Default is 30 degrees. ■Sketch File Name – Specify the sketch file name to be exported if desired. If no extension exists, “*.ske” is added automatically. ■Preserved Nodes List – Specify list of nodes that Adams Flex should not remove in addition to the interface nodes. Only retained nodes can be used to place markers, joints, and so on, onto the flexible body. Therefore, make sure to include relevant nodes. No need to specify interface nodes since they are always retained. Advanced automatic coarsening option is more powerful and efficient for reducing the size of huge Flex file (MNF or MD DB). This option generates a reduced Flex file and a sketch file to be applied. The reduced Flex file is no different from a physical perspective, but much lighter for graphical display purposes, while significant faces are retained to provide suitable animation of the flex body. For more information on environment variables, see Adams Flex Environment Variables. |
Editing an MNF or an MD DB File
The Adams Flex Toolkit used to edit the node interface data from a Modal Neutral File (MNF) or an MD DB file and write updated data to an output MNF or MD DB file.
To edit an MNF and write to an output MNF:
1. Select the tab MNF -> MNF Editor.
Options for editing the MNF appear in the Adams Flex toolkit.
2. Right-click the MNF or MD DB Input File text box, and then select "Select A File".
The file browsing dialog box appears. Select the MNF or MD DB of interest, and then close the dialog box.
3. If MD DB is selected and it has more than one flexible body in it, the Index textbox will be enabled. Right-click it and select a flexible body from the popup dialog box. The index of it will be input in the Index textbox.
4. Enter MNF or MD DB Output File name or right-click Output File text box, and then select "Select A File". Select the MNF of MD DB interest, and then close the dialog box.
5. Click the Get Interface Node Coordinates button to read the MNF and populate the table with interface node data.
6. This data table has four columns:
a. Node ID: Column lists the node ID's of all the interface/attachment nodes (a.k.a "ASET's") in the specified MNF / MD DB Index. This is a read-only column.
b. X Coordinate: Column lists the X coordinates of each row's interface node, these cells are editable and could accept only real values. If it is edited, it will turn cyan.
c. Y Coordinate: Column lists the Y coordinates of each row's interface node; these cells are editable and could accept only real values. If it is edited, it will turn cyan.
d. Z Coordinate: Column lists the Z coordinates of each row's interface node; these cells are editable and could accept only real values. If it is edited, it will turn cyan.
7. To modify the modal scaling factors for generalized mass and generalized stiffness, enter positive real values in Generalized Mass and Generalized Stiffness text boxes.
8. Set Precision option in the dialog box according to the precision desired for the new MNF. The Precision option is explained in the table in Optimizing an MNF or an MD DB.
9. Once all editing is done, click the File Processing button 
to generate a new MNF based on editing.
to generate a new MNF based on editing.