×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

FEA Post-Processor Development

FEA Post-Processor Development

FEA Post-Processor Development

(OP)

Greetings,

I am interested in learning more about how to develop an FEA post-processor.  I would like to develop a GUI that is capable of displaying structure geometry, deformations, result contours, etc.  I have a decent programming background, but I haven't done much with graphics applications.  Any guidance or helpful discussions would be greatly appreciated!

Best Regards,
 

RE: FEA Post-Processor Development

Hi ATX,

As Greg mentioned, developing a post-processor might not be worth your time.  I think there is more room for improvement on the pre-processor side, especially non graphics intense tools that just do things like convert input files from one solver form to another (Abaqus format to Ansys format or whatever solver you so desire).

Regards,
-Dan

Dan Milligan
Firehole Composites (www.firehole.com)
FHC provides software and consulting for analysis of composite structures.

RE: FEA Post-Processor Development

(OP)

Hi guys,

Thank you so much for replying to my post.  I should have been more specific.  I am developing a specialized FEA program tailored for a specific type of dynamic analysis.  The deliverable is for a private client and they do not want a 3rd party pre-processor or post-processor to be packaged with their program.  Consequently, I am having to develop my own tools.  I have the pre-processor and main number crunching processor pretty well handled, but I am struggling with the development of a graphical post-processor.  I do not expect to be able to develop something as sophisticated as LS PrePost or Abaqus's visualization module, but I would like to develop something similar (i.e., graphical display capable of showing structure geometry, deformations, stress/strain contours, etc.) Getting a hold of an open source post-processor that I could plug into my FEA program may be one option.  Starting from scratch using something like OpenGL may be another option.  I was just trying to reach out to the FEA community to see if anyone had any guidance with respect to the above discussion.

Best,
   

RE: FEA Post-Processor Development

ATX,

HOOPS3D and Eyeshot Ultimate are two that I have found.  Eyeshot was very easy to implement (it is .Net based), but lacked some of the advanced graphical features of HOOPS3D.  However, for FEA results is not like you need reflections, shadowing, and all the other rendering type graphical features.

If you find any others post back or email me.  I would be interested in see what you find as well.

Steve
 

Stephen Seymour, PE
Seymour Engineering & Consulting Group
www.seymourecg.com  

RE: FEA Post-Processor Development

You might want to look at VTK (http://www.vtk.org/). It's open source and I think CAELinux uses it as the main postprocessor (though I may be wrong about this).

HTH,
Dan

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources