Beams and mesh

[tmoser]

I'm trying to represent a tubular diagonal brace, and the pins that attach the brace to a structure, using beams. The pin beams have two segments so I have a node at the center to attach the diagonal brace to. The ends of each pin have a fixed joint connecting them to the holes in the ears (pictured in the first attachment).  The diagonal brace has spherical joints on each end so I have a beam release on one end allowing all three rotations. The other end has the Y and Z rotations released but the X rotation remains fixed to prevent  the beam from spinning about it's own axis.

The trouble comes when I generate the solid mesh. When I have all of the attachment pins in the model, Creo Ansys will generate the solid mesh with no problem. As soon as I put a diagonal brace into the model, the meshing process fails, sometimes with a fatal error. Creo Ansys doesn't give any diagnostics, so I have no idea what the issue is or how to resolve it. Do I need joints between the ends of the diagonal brace and the center of the pins?

[SweetPeasHub]

I think some of the lack of response to this is because so few in the community have Creo Ansys experience. There are other cases where Creo Ansys is mentioned that have the same situation. If it was Creo Simulate I would suggest a few things like increasing the plotting grid from the default of 3, which is pretty standard for beams. Also I would ask what you mean by the pin beams having two segments? Is it one beam defined by three points or two independent beams (each)  that make up the pin beams? Also I have seen meshing that works only for some small change to make it not work. The problem was elsewhere in the model from the thing that was added to made meshing break. It was some issue based on geometry accuracy/tolerance that was changing.

[tmoser · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the reply.

I resolved this quite some time ago but not how I really wanted to. I finally just created a model of the diagonal brace and put a solid mesh on it. I used joints to connect the ends of the brace to the pins.

The pins are still beams. What I meant by two segments is a single beam defined by three points. I did this so I had a node at the center of the beam to use as a connection to the diagonal brace.