MOD files ?

[rb1957]

apologies, I'm being lazy, but we tend to be better at responding than the help desk ...

I have some old MOD files. But my FeMap (11.3.2) doesn't want to open (as FeMap neutral, or as analysis model).

Any ideas how to bring these back to life ? Get an old FeMap version ?? Ask the helpdesk ??

another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[ThomasH]

Hi
I don't remember the exact version numbers but I recently opened a few old MOD-files in a current version of Femap, no problems. Are the files very large? I have noticed that large files can be an issue to convert, not impossible but it takes a while.

If you can share a file I would be happy to try opening it. I have v2022.1 and 2022.2 currently installed. Actually, I see that I have a few more installed if it helps.

Edit: I checked in the "Neutral File Write Options" and it should be possible to write a file to v11.3. So I don't think it should be a problem to open the file. I know that writing files to old version can give "interesting" results.

Thomas

 

[rb1957]

Thx Tom. Files aren't that big, 6 Mb.

Importing as FeMap neutral file ... says it read the file, but no errors and nothing imported ?

I did find this somewhat helpful direction ...

Converting Old Models

Conversion from v4.4 and Later

FEMAP binary database (.MOD) files from previous versions of FEMAP are not compatible with this version. The current version of FEMAP, however, can automatically translate model files from FEMAP v4.4 and later to the cur­rent version. No action is required by the user. FEMAP will automatically read the database, translate to a FEMAP neutral file, and then convert the neutral file to the latest database format.

Conversion of v4 files - Prior to v4.4

If you have been using a version of FEMAP prior to v4.4, you will probably have existing models that you want to use with this new version. Your old model (.MOD) files are not compatible with this version of FEMAP and cannot be read by the latest version of FEMAP. You can convert your models to FEMAP neutral files, however, so they can be used with this system.

The best approach to doing the conversion is to do the following:

1. Using your old version of FEMAP, open the model that you want to convert.

2. Use the File, Translate command (pre Version 5), or the File, Export, FEMAP Neutral command, to write a FEMAP neutral file. You can choose any filename for this command. If your model contains output for post-processing you can also write that to the neutral file for automatic conversion.

3. Exit your old version of FEMAP.

4. Start the new version of FEMAP with a new, empty model.

5. Choose the File, Import, FEMAP Neutral command.

6. When the list of files is displayed, enter the name of the neutral file that you just created. You can set any of the other translation options that you want, but usually you will just want to press OK and accept the defaults. FEMAP will now read the neutral file and build your converted model.

7. Before you exit FEMAP, remember to save your model. Either use the File, Save As command or just respond Yes to the question about saving your model as you exit FEMAP.

Other Methods to Convert Models

The above approach used a FEMAP neutral file to convert your model. You can follow the same steps using any of the other translator formats that are supported in your earlier version of FEMAP. If you use one of these alternate formats however, no colors, groups, or other FEMAP-specific data will be converted.

Converting from Version 3 and Before

If you still have the output files from your analysis program, it will probably be better to skip writing the output to the neutral file. Due to the large number of changes in this version of the program, output that is translated from neutral files that were written by earlier versions of FEMAP will be moved to output vectors that it would not oth­erwise occupy. You will still be able to post-process this output, but if you later read additional analysis output into new output sets, it will not be in the same vectors as the output converted via the neutral file. For maximum com­patibility, it is therefore best to skip writing output to the neutral file and reread your analysis output directly into this version of FEMAP.

If you do this, you will have to use File, Import, Analysis Results to read the output files into the newly converted model.

Due to the extensive enhancements that were made between Version 3 and 4 of FEMAP, significant changes had to be made to the neutral file format. Therefore, even though you follow the procedure defined above, your complete model cannot be converted exactly. Again, these limitations only apply if you are converting a neutral file from Version 3 or before - not a Version 4 neutral file. The following items will either not be converted, or will be mod­ified during the conversion:

• As noted above, all output will be moved to new output vectors. The new vectors will all have IDs above 300000, just like user-defined output.

• Display, Window, and Post options will be skipped. The new views, which combine all of these features and many more, are so different that it is impossible to convert these old options. You must define new views.

• PostProcessing report formats will be skipped. Again, these have changed so much that they cannot be con­verted. Either select new standard formats or redefine them in your new model.

• Groups will be converted, but the format has changed dramatically. Some types of group definition, like con­straints by DOF, cannot be converted because they are no longer supported. If you see any messages when read­ing the neutral file, you should check your groups carefully.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




another day in paradise, or is paradise one day closer ?

 

[ThomasH]

Hi
Sounds strange, I have experienced issues when importing old files. But the explanation has usually been large files and not enough space on the harddrive.

I know that there is a limit to how old the files can be. I did not know the exact limit but your information sounds familiar. At the time I used MSC.Nastran for Windows so it was expressed in N4W versions.

Thomas