FEA software / WeldFEM Communication
In the FEA software, several FE-models can be loaded at the same time in two ways. Either the FE-models are loaded individually into different FEA software instances or they are loaded in only one FEA software instance.
WeldFEMs communication is limited to only one FEA software instance, the first one. Hence, before starting a weld assessment the FE-model to be evaluated has to be opened in the first FEA software instance. Otherwise the wrong FE-model will be taken for the assessment. Any further FEA software instances wont be noticed by WeldFEM. Therefore it is recommended to only use one FEA software instance for evaluating welds with WeldFEM.
In case there are more than one FE-model loaded in the same FEA software instance, WeldFEM will communicate with the FE-model of the active view tab only. This means that switching from one FE-model to the other through the view tabs will also lead to a change in the communication between both programs. Thus it is recommended to only load one FE-model into the FEA software instance for evaluating welds with WeldFEM.
In short: For evaluating welds with WeldFEM and FEA software it's recommended to use only one FEA software instance with only one model loaded.
WeldFEM can only be started if the FE-model is currently open in the FEA software and has been saved to a directory.
The FE-analysis results of the FEA software have to be loaded or attached to the FE-model in order for WeldFEM to access them.
In case WeldFEM reports errors during the weld detection, these should be corrected and the third step repeated, for this WeldFEM has to be reset with Reset.
It is recommended to resolve the errors in the original FE-model first in order to avoid having multiple FE-models with results on which the weld assessment may be performed.