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Simplify the export of ABAQUS part files to one of several CAD formats, with the option to scale the output to units of your choice and store to a user selected folder. I have been distracted from blog posts by other things, I would love to say life, but other coding things which I hope to announce very soon. So today a simple one – a very brief dash through using the incredibly easy Really Simple GUI addon for ABAQUS to create a handy little plugin that makes exporting your

Reading around the hype about AI and trying to understand the promises, good and bad, that are being made about the technology. I have had a little time off recently and this has given me the chance to catch up on the mountain of improving books that I keep buying. Given the current hype about AI, I thought I ought to get with the program and understand some of the arguments about it. It is very easy to be seduced by the enthusiasm. My own very limited experience of using pro

ABAQUS CAE lets you permanently store user data within the model and output files, the trick is how to access it again… Introduction The goal is to obtain information or setting values from the user and store them, permanently, with the model data such that they can be retrieved and reused, loaded back into a plugin for a future user to check or edit. Getting the data into the model or odb files is simple. Extracting it from a saved file and repopulating a plugin dialog needs

A few weeks ago I had an afternoon off in London while working nights and I wandered into the Design Museum. I have mixed feelings about it… the good, the bad, and the thought provoking! The building, like the Tate Modern in St Ives, is fabulous and a great space to spend a leisurely hour or two. Also like the Tate, the content is mixed. I found some of the statements in the exhibit cards frankly narcissistic and ridiculous. The kind of thing that gives design, and designers,

Arranging and renaming your ABAQUS plugins without editing the code. Accessing your plugins collection is made easy using the plugins menu. When you have lots of plugins then it becomes a chore to arrange your menus to suit yourself so that they appear in a logical way that makes them easy to find, with a clear name indicating what they do and when to use them. I have found the following tips have made my user experience more efficient. Limit Visibility When you write your pl

The final part on this mini-project – controlling the game. In Part 2 we saw how the GUI called kernel functions in response to user input in the dialog and ran everything through the GUI’s processUpdates function to keep all the events synchronised. We shall now explore how the shapes are moved, how their positions are controlled to prevent them going too far, how contact between shapes is established and how the completed rows of blocks are removed to achieve a score. Movin

This third article on the mini-project I set myself, to build a version of TETRIS in ABAQUS, focuses on creating the game elements and manipulating the user’s view. The original game was completely 2D, this version appears to be 2D, but it is actually 3D, with the view controlled so that there is no perspective. The visual elements of the game are divided between creating the objects that represent the playing pieces and the playing surface, and control of the view, screen se

Creating an interactive dialog that contains a game loop to allow my implementation of TETRIS in ABAQUS to operate

Animation of game play, start to Game Over Recreating a classic game using python scripting in ABAQUS. Once again I am late with my blog post but this is just in time for a Xmas so that’s OK. I decided to do something silly and make a game in ABAQUS, because why not? After quite a bit of head scratching over what I thought would be a nice simple demonstration of some scripting techniques, I have produced a full working version of the classic game Tetris. Why Tetris? Well, I a

Another brief blog post this week as I have been busy on both a coding course and a programming exercise, which, when I get it working, I shall share. Going back to my roots with a simple fluid dynamics code. So for this week I shall simply share the templates that I have made and use, with reminders in place, for making different kinds of ABAQUS scripts. Templates are great. They save you time hammering out the boilerplate and forgetting that basic detail that you are so use

For this week’s blog post a very unglamorous subject for the scripting beginner: reading and writing basic text files to and from ABAQUS and formatting the data so that appears in tabular form for use elsewhere. Not difficult, but a potential source of headaches for the beginner. There is no difference in the file operations between using Python in the ABAQUS environment and regular Python. Once you have the basics of file I/O then you can start to interrogate your models and

Creativity is corporate survival. Involving, and recognising, people at all levels of the business in problem solving activities is key to motivating new thinking and maximising the chances of getting a great solution. Introduction I believe that achieving a creative, high-visibility environment leads to better ideas, improved staff engagement and retention rates, greater performance, and a stronger, more profitable, company. Building such a space is a challenge and becomes m

A method for running a series of jobs that leaves the user interface free for other activities. Unlike the command line batch script though it leaves the CAE license with the current user. Two essential modern truths: Machines are cheap, good people are expensive. Time is money. Maximise your people’s time and save money by sweating the machines, they will not complain. A lot of FEA models take a while to run. If you set a job to run at 5pm and go home and it finishes at 11pm

Sometimes user input is essential for your script... the next best to no GUI is a simple GUI. I stated in a previous post that user interfaces for your ABAQUS scripts should be avoided wherever possible because they complicate the code and make it more time consuming to change. If you really must have a GUI then the simplest one possible should be used. The most basic is a kernel dialog where the user enters data into a text box, without any kind of feedback. This was used in

Animation of some of the combinations possible using the geometry generating script. I am behind on my posting schedule – I might plead...

Thoughts prompted in part by Dan Davis' book - image book/AI via Krita Maximising the utilisation of your human capital is a terrible...

Dynamic generation of a 3D block in ABAQUS via an interactive dialog box Question: Does AI bring productivity benefits when creating...

Short post pointing out that a lot of uses for AI are ephemeral but still greatly aid productivity.

Article about a script demonstrating the efficiency gains that can be achieved by fluency in scripting and automation for ABAQUS.

Article demonstrating how to create interactive graphics on an ABAQUS dialog box - working example with a stick figure walking off the end of the world.