Import loads in Creo Simulate 3.0

[azimmermann]

Hello.

I am facing a desperate situation right now.

We received from our customer a 3D model and an excel file containing a point cloud from their CFD analysis. The excel file is structured. There are the x-y-z-coordinates of each point and every point have also an information about the force that is applied in the particular point (also x-y-z-triplet).

With this information our aim is to make a FE-Analysis.

I managed to write a macro that exports the coordinates into an .pts file that Creo Parametric can handle. In the modeling environment I can see the points in 3D space.

But how can I import these information into Creo Simulate? I could import the point cloud and apply the forces manually to every point. But we have ~5000 points, that would be wasting of time.

My first idea was to use the excel macro to generate a file that Creo uses to read all the information about where the points are located and which load is applied. As far as i know Creo Simulate stores the "load information" in an .xml file inside the Analysis output folder. But in that file is no information about coordinates.

Is Creo Simulate even capable of "importing loads"? For me it seems to be a basic functionality that should be supported.

Thank you very much for any help you can give.

[manjunathrv]

Unfortunately No. Even we are facing a similar issue of importing loads from a spread sheet output from Adams, but not possible.

See the below discussion.

Import Load values from XLS

[mfischer]

Hi all,

Today, Creo Simulate does not allow the automatic import of loads from an external file out of the box.  We have worked closely with one of our development partner, AMC Bridge (https://amcbridge.com/), who created a toolkit application that will allow import of loads in Creo Simulate.

For more information on this solution, please check our their product page - Auto-Loads™ for PTC® Creo® Simulate™ - AMC Bridge

It is a free download.....

Happy Holidays.

Mark

[346gnu]

Mark,

I sent you an email

Regards

Charles

[azimmermann]

Thank you very much for this tool. It seems to be what I am looking for.

The support of AMC told me that Auto-Loads supports only Creo 3.0 release M030 and M040. Unfortunately we use M100.

Nevertheless I managed to unpack the Auto-Loads install file and install it manually by copying the right files into the right directories. And now the add-in works.

BUT... after choosing the .txt file the add-in starts loading and applying the points and loads. While doing this, Creo slows down exponentially, so our computer calculated for several days to load about 1000 out of 5000 points. Additionally the add-in creates a new Creo-file for every point (waste of memory). We cancelled this loading procedure.

In the end with this tool we are moving into the right direction. But it's not really the solution for our applications due to an ineffective loading of points (probably beacause of incompatibility with M100). We would be glad to have an compatible add-in soon.

[Belief]

Hi @mfischer could you share a download link. I am not able to find the download link. Thanks. I was looking for a solution like this for a long time.

[mfischer]

Hi @Belief ,

Here is the link to AMC Bridge's website that you can find out more information about the plug-in.

https://www.amcbridge.com/resources/labs/desktop-apps/auto-loads-for-ptc-creo-simulate

You will need to contact them for the download.

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Mark

[fmueller]

We are also looking for a solution to apply a thermal load calculated by an external raytracing program into Creo Simulate. Obviously Creo lacks that useful function and there seems no practicable workaround since years. How does PTC want to be competitive with other FEA solutions?

For our application this is a real showstopper and we have to use another program. Every solution proposed by the hotline was so time consuming and difficult to use (danger of making errors).

On the other hand it sounds quite simple to allow Simulate to import load data generated in excel or using a csv.v So why is PTC not doing it? Has anyone an idea? 

[azimmermann]

I guess this is not on the priority list of PTC. When I started this post in 2016 I received a message from the support with a contact address to AMC Bridge. The message suggested to contact AMC in order to require an extend of their "Auto-Loads" tool to gain the desired functionality (not costless). The last update of this tool is almost 2 years ago. The point is, that PTC misses this opportunity. Why should our company task AMC Bridge with the development, since PTC can manage this more easily? And I guess they have enough financial power for doing this. It seems that PTC just do not see any need for this tool, unfortunately. I am sure the connection of a model with external loads in Simulate is an important feature that many Creo users desire. Back then, for our part, we were not able to satisfy all requirements of our customer due to this faulty feature.

[fmueller]

We have already switched to FEMAP/Nastran because of this. We would like to use Simulate also for these heat load calculations but only if that problem is solved. Otherwise we might say good bye to PTC Simulate. If PTC is really intrested in keeping customers they should so something!

It really cant' be a huge amount of programming work as a 1-dimensional (line by line) possibility already exists. To extend it to a 2 dimensional table should be quite easy work for a talentet programmer PTC surely has!