Material Orientation in COM interface

[Ruben]

Hello,

If a user changes the orientation within HS, I can no longer use the element material orientation to determine the x and y directions. Is the material orientation exposed in the COM interface (and the normal for that matter).

Thanks,
Ruben

[Stephen]

Hi Ruben,

Unfortunately, material orientations and element normals are not available through the scripting API. Can you clarify the issue you are concerned about? Are you attempting to determine element orientations? Perhaps there is another way the information you need can be obtained.

Thanks,
Stephen

[Ruben]

Hi Stephen,

I'm extracting the component buckling dimensions and centroids from Hypersizer and attempting to draw the component in 3D space. If I use the original FEM data to get the x direction and the element normal from an element of a component and the user changes the x direction or the normals, then my representation is wrong.

Regards,
Ruben

[Stephen]

Ruben,

OK I think I understand. There is an additional challenge associated with this however, because components do not inherently have an x-direction in HyperSizer, only elements do. Although the material directions in a component should be generally consistent, this is not a requirement (example: tapered stiffeners on a wing). The same logic applies with normal directions although there are few useful reasons to have them non-uniform.

Unfortunately I do not think there is a good way to extract the modified material directions from  HyperSizer unless a FEM update is performed and they are extracted per-element from the FEM. Note that a FEM update can be executed from the scripting API, if that is helpful.

-Stephen