This method is a sophisticated way of showing the results of solid models and can also be useful for shell models.
A boundary is created between the material that is to be kept as the design and the material that is to be removed.
This boundary is plotted as a continuous surface, which reveals the shape of the solution, created by OptiStruct. Since the boundary is smooth, it is more visually appealing and easier to understand than a plot with low density elements masked off.
There are two methods for creating and viewing the iso-density boundary:
Use the contour panel in HyperMesh.
This option allows you to quickly and easily display many iso-density plots for fast visualization. HyperMesh works directly with the HyperMesh format results file.
Use the OSSmooth translator included with OptiStruct.
This option creates a surface using triangular elements in Nastran or surface patches in IGES format that can be read into a pre- and post- processor to be visualized and/or manipulated. Using OSSmooth requires the intermediate step of running the translator and also requires the .fem and .sh files from the OptiStruct optimization run. The shape file, .sh, is always output at the end of the run regardless of the output format requested.
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Post-processing a Topology Optimization