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To preface this question, almost all of my FEA experience has come from SolidWorks, so I haven't had to deal with these types of problems.

I'm designing a truss structure in PATRAN composed of 1D line elements.

At some point, I have to do the following two things:

  • Mesh each individual line to create nodes
  • Apply properties (material, cross-section, stiffness) to curves

Sometimes I apply the properties first, but when I attempt to mesh PATRAN tells me "Curve is in property xyz which does not support Bar2."

Sometimes I mesh first, but when I analyze the truss my results file is sometimes empty. I can't tell what distinguishes when it works and when it doesn't.

In which order should I do these?

Anonymouse
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  • This might help: http://web.mscsoftware.com/support/online_ex/previous_Patran/Pat302/Exercise_16_Freebody_Analysis.pdf. Without a detailed step-by-step description of what you did, it's hard to guess where you went off-course. – alephzero Mar 29 '16 at 04:04

1 Answers1

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The material orientation matters. For 1D, give the material(section) direction as <0 1 0>

Shinu_John
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