ADAMS/View

What's New

Auto-plugin capability

A Plugin Manager has been added for the 2003 release. The Plugin Manager is an extremely useful tool that allows you to select all of the plugins you want to load or unload at one time. You have the choice of loading plugins for just a single session or every time, automatically, at startup.

To access the Plugin Manager:

Launch ADAMS/View.

From the Tools menu, select Plugin Manager.

The Plugin Manager dialog box is displayed as shown next.

Select Load and/or Load at Startup for all the plugin products you want to use.

Load loads the plugin for use in the current session.

Load at Startup loads the plugin every time, automatically, at startup.

Select OK.
The selected plugin products are now loaded. If you exit and restart ADAMS/View, those products for which you selected Load at Startup will be automatically loaded.

Note: You need a valid license for each plugin to load that plugin in ADAMS/View.

Color panel

A new Color Picker was added to ADAMS/View. This new Color Picker allows colors to be selected interactively. Additional color attributes such as Hue, Saturation, and Value can be specified in the new Color Picker.

To access the Color Picker:

From the Settings menu, select Color.

Select the Color Picker button.

Click on one of the basic colors or on the color palette to select a color.

Solver compatibility

With MSC.ADAMS 2003, the new ADAMS/Solver (C++) version has added significant functionality (see the What’s New for ADAMS/Solver for details). With these additions, the ADAMS/Solver (C++) now supports some entities that are not supported for the ADAMS/Solver (FORTRAN). For this reason, we have added a solver-compatibility check. When using ADAMS/View, this check is called as each object is created. It is also called for each object as it is created when a .cmd file is imported, for the entire model when an .adm file is imported, and for the entire model before simulation.

Compatibility results are reported as warning messages when the state of the model changes. There are four possible states for a model: Both, F77Only, CxxOnly, Neither. The initial state of a model is Both.

Flexible body performance improvements

Changes have been made in the handling of flexible bodies that lead to faster caching in preparation for animation, as well as better performance on the preprocessing side in cases where multiple flexible bodies are present.

This is in addition to the solver performance improvements for flexible bodies discussed in the What’s New for ADAMS/Solver.

New analytical algorithms for extrusions

ADAMS/View now instructs Parasolid to use the analytical representation of the profile and the path to generate an extrusion, instead of using a polygonal approximation. Using an analytical extrusion will, for example, make a circle follow the extrusion path as you expect and generally increases the accuracy of the extrusions.

SENSOR enhancements

The SENSOR enhancements made in ADAMS/Solver are supported in the ADAMS/View interface. Specifically, the new EVALUATE keyword is supported on the ADAMS/View Create Sensor dialog box. The optional event evaluation can be specified as either a Run-Time Expression or User-Defined Subroutine. See the What’s New for ADAMS/Solver for additional details.

Note: This sensor enhancement is only applies to ADAMS/Solver (C++).

Contact enhancements

Many improvements were made to 3D contacts for the 2003 release. These improvements, related to performance, contact between lists of geometries, availability of additional contact incident information, and contact force user-subroutines are summarized in detail in the What’s New for ADAMS/Solver. The tips below describe how to access these improvements in ADAMS/View and ADAMS/PostProcessor (see What's New for ADAMS/PostProcessor).

The I Solid and J Solid text boxes on the Create Contacts dialog box now accepts multiple geometry entries separated by comma.

To create a contact that includes several geometries simply select each of the individual geometries in succession. The geometries do need to be part of the same part, however.
In ADAMS/PostProcessor, double-click the contact name (for example, CONTACT_1) in either the results set or object list to access the additional contact incident information.

Location of the contact point on each body, normal and frictional force vectors, friction coefficient, slip deformation and slip velocity, penetration depth and velocity can now all be plotted.

In addition, if two bodies contact each other in multiple locations, separate contact ‘tracks’ are now calculated and the incident information for each of these tracks is available for plotting.
To use a user-defined normal or friction force, select the option from the Normal Force or Friction Force pull-down menu on the Create Contact dialog box.

2D contact improvements

In addition to the 3D contact improvements made this release, 2D contacts were also enhanced.

Polylines can now be used as contact curves as noted in the What's New for ADAMS/Solver. They are approximated with splines of order 2 for this purpose.

Force graphics supported for friction forces

Force graphics can now be displayed for friction forces.

New unit type: volume_flow_rate

A new unit type of flow_rate is now supported. The units are length³ per time.

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Changes

Spline Changes

The spline representation has been changed to be consistent with ADAMS/Solver avoiding some potential discrepancies between the graphical representation and the simulated curve. The tension parameter has been removed from the spline statement and you can now specify the spline order.

Due to the changes in the spline representation, closed splines must now have the same first and last points. You will need to update any old cmd files containing closed splines that do not meet this requirement in order to use them in MSC.ADAMS 2003.

The number of steps stored with UNDO increased

The default has changed from 10 to 20.

Aerodynamic force dialog box removed

The aerodynamic force dialog box was found to be confusing. For this, and a variety of other reasons, it has been removed.

Default naming for imported Parasolid files

During the import of a Parasolid file, ADAMS/View checks if the RGB values used for a Parasolid color matches one of the existing colors in the ADAMS/View database. If so, the ADAMS/View color is used. Otherwise, a new color is created. The former method was to name the new color Parasolidxx, where xx was the index number for the color. The new scheme encodes the RGB values into the name itself. This change allows the color to be reconstructed when read from a template file for one of the vertical products (e.g., ADAMS/Car, ADAMS/Rail, and so on).

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Issues resolved

During the course of 2003 release development, many maintenance and support issues have been resolved. The list below illustrates some of the key issues that are resolved. Contact your local MSC.ADAMS support provider for determining the status of other specific issues.

Items resolved in the 12.0 Service Pack

The 2003 release of ADAMS/View includes all of the fixes and enhancements that were provided in the 12.0 Service Pack (ADAMS/View 12.0 Service Pack, APN-120-173). For reference, a selection of these items are summarized below. A full list can be viewed on the service pack distribution system at the link above.

31766
A new user function aggregate_mass has been created to allow calculation and storage of aggregate mass information which can be used in parametrics or stored in variables for subsequent usage. The syntax for the function is:

aggregate_mass(array_of_objects, reference_frame_key, type_string)

where:

array_of_objects is a single object or an array of objects.
The only valid object types are models, bodies and tires. If a model is specified, it must be the only object passed in.
reference_frame_key refers to a reference frame for reporting the aggregate mass cm position and inertia marker angles. If none is used, the default is with respect to the global coordinate system.
type_string is what type of aggregate mass information is desired.
The available choices are:
- mass - Mass value (1 real)
- cm_pos - Center of mass location (3 reals)
- im_ang - Inertia marker angles (3 reals)
- inertias - Inertia properties (6 reals)

32011
An optimization has been added for flexible bodies with contours set to stress, strain, or modal load, that have the scale factor set to zero. They now animate with significant performance improvement.

27650
Incorrectly formatted TeimOrbit files (such as those containing extra blank lines) were found to cause unexpected termination of the product when reading in some cases. Improved error checking in the file readers displays error messages when possible and blocks known cases of product crashes.

28140
The viewport contained uninitialized graphics during startup on the Windows platform. The viewport buffer has been flushed to solve this problem.

29264
It was discovered that some products (such as ADAMS/Car) used the Message window to display messages during DOE runs. The Message window accumulates text without clearing the buffers, causing a large amount of memory to be consumed storing the message text. This caused dramatic performance penalties for large DOE runs. The Message window buffer is now cleared during DOE runs to reduce the memory overhead and eliminate the performance penalty.

29906
A reference marker with orientation set to 0,0,0 was incorrectly set and used to communicate a Parasolid geometry to the solver. If the actual reference marker's orientation was different, then the interface and solver would use different orientations of the geometry, resulting in unexpected results. The correct reference to the actual geometry reference marker has been restored and tested to ensure correct communication of Parasolid geometry to the solver.

29984
In the 12.0 release, the command default attributes icon_visibility specified icon visibility for the entire session, including undisplayed models and submodels. This caused significant performance penalties with large assemblies. The feature has been updated to limit the scope of the command to the displayed models/submodels to improve overall performance.

30120
The reload simulation feature in ADAMS/Postprocessor did not correctly account for static steps in the results for computed measures. Because of this, the y-data of the curve had the static steps in it but the time data had them removed. Therefore, any curve values after a static were shifted by the number of static frames. This has been corrected so that computed measures function as expected.

30233
When using measure stripcharts and running a simulation with static steps, the measure display was not correctly updated. This has been corrected so that measures display values properly during a simulation.

30298
When multiple transparent objects are included in a single view, certain objects may not show through other objects. This happened with the Native OpenGL driver only. The transparency ordering has been corrected.

30502
The small Coordinate window, used to display the coordinates of the mouse pointer, was discovered to be returning incorrect coordinates in some cases. The Coordinate window has been fixed and now displays the correct values.

31733
During release 12.0 development, an experimental AUGMENTED_LAGRANGE parameter was added to some force elements. The functionality was not completed for the release, but the parameter remained in the language. This caused those of you who used the Command Navigator to work with models and did not disable the AUGMENTED_LAGRANGE parameter, to get incorrect force results. The parameter has been removed from the command language and should not appear in models except for contacts.

Additional items resolved

38098
Improvements were made in the alignment of markers when creating CV_Joints. Previously, the orientation of the I and J markers sometimes had an undesired offset. This has been resolved.

In MSC.ADAMS 12.0 a known issue existed with the force graphics of a model disappearing during animations when you simulate the model with the Execution Display set to either never or simulation end. This has been fixed in for the 2003 release.

MSC.ADAMS 12.0 had a known issue that occurred when both .req and .res files from an external ADAMS/Solver simulation were imported. The user-defined (function expression) REQUEST would often not appear appropriately in the Source field when creating plots. Essentially the .req and .res results duplicate one another for user-defined REQUESTs and this confused ADAMS/PostProcessor. This has been fixed in ADAMS/PostProcessor version 2003.

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Known issues

Please go to the Knowledge Base to read all of the Known Issues for ADAMS/View 2003

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Revised: 09/06/05