MSC.Laminate Modeler results can be rearranged to produce output for a single continuous piece of fabric rather than a local element‑based ply‑by‑ply representation of the results. This feature is essential for proper results interpretation because a single piece of fabric may be represented by different ply numbers on different elements. The common approach to results processing is to produce results by ply number over a range of elements. This can lead to completely misleading results for typical components.The results rearrangement creates a new set of results in the database which uses the exact definition of a fabric on an element/ply‑number scheme, allowing meaningful postprocessing as illustrated below.

As can be seen, the analysis references to plies can be in error. This rearrangement of results does not give “better” or “more accurate results” but provides a more realistic grouping of results. The functionality can be used to rearrange any results stored and referenced by plies in the database. For example, you could create failure criteria results using P/LAM or an in-house program, read the results into Patran, and then sort these results on the basis of global plies. The initial release of this functionality extracts and creates results at element centroids.

Some more simple examples can be used to help visualize the difference.

This initial version of the results manipulation always tries to operate on a single result per layer.

MSC.Laminate Modeler determines how many results there are per ply by a simple formula: the number of layer results from database divided by the maximum number of plies on any element.

If the value of this = 1 then MSC.Laminate Modeler uses that single value to create the new results.

If the value is > 1 then a further calculation is done to extract what should be a reasonable value.

For example: