I get an error message from TRANSOR for I-DEAS that the number of element groups exceeds 200. What is the problem?
Answer:
During the translation of the I-DEAS model, the following rule is used for creating a new element group division.
- When looping over all the elements according to element label order, if the element type OR material type of the element is different from the previous element, a new element group division is created.
Example:
Element Labels | Element Type | Material | Group Division |
1 - 25 | Shell | 20 | 1 |
26 - 77 | Shell | 23 | 2 |
78 - 122 | Shell | 20 | 3 |
123 - 129 | Beam | 20 | 4 |
130 - 184 | Shell | 20 | 5 |
In general, if the number of element groups exceeds 200, it may mean that the element label sequence is too fragmented. If that is the case, it is advisable to re-label the elements in I-DEAS such that elements of the same type and material are labeled in a contiguous manner.
In the above example, by re-labeling the elements such that all the shell elements with material 20 are contiguous, the number of element group divisions will be reduced from 5 to 3.
If the error message still occur after re-labeling the elements, you can increase the maximum number of element groups by using the TRANSOR option file. Create a file called "transor.opt" in the working directory with the following text in the file.
MAXA_EGROUP_DIVISION 500This will set the maximum number of element groups to 500.