[Paraview] VTU files for multi-body FEA models.

[Jesse Gerber]

Hello,

I am a mechanical engineering grad student. This question is regarding an active research project in our lab. We wrote a FEA program in C++ for 3D solid mechanics problems. At each time step, we output a vtu file using the unstructured grid format. Finally, we output a pvd file that creates a collection and associates a time step value with each vtu file. So far, we have been working with a single body, comprised of multiple hexahedral elements. Our point data consists of displacement, velocity, and acceleration. Our cell data consists of centroid stress and centroid strain.

We now want to start solving multi-body models. Do we have to write a separate vtu file for each body, at each time step? Is there a way to combine multiple bodies into a single vtu file, at each time step, in a way that we can still view them as separate parts in ParaView? I would like be able to use show/hide and color on a part basis. How do people usually handle this sort of thing? For example, if I have 10 parts, will I have 10 separate vtu files at each time step? Note that, within the FEA code, we define a part_id for each element in the model. Is there a way I can associate each element with a part_id in the vtu file? That way ParaView could tell the difference between each part?

Thank you for your help!

 

Best regards,

 

Jesse

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