Chapter 15: Using Planes to Understand Results

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Results Planes are the primary tool for visualizing data on three dimensional models. They are cutting planes, and have several roles in Autodesk Simulation CFD results visualization:

This chapter focuses on the following topics:

Creating and Managing Planes

Results Plane workflow

To create a Plane

To rename a Plane

To view the Selection List

To select a Plane

Note: Select a plane before modifying it.

To disable highlighting of the active Plane

To disable a Plane

Note: A disabled Plane is not displayed, and cannot be modified. Hiding Planes is useful when capturing an image of a specific Plane.

To delete a plane

Note: Use Summary Planes to save and compute Bulk results for all scenarios in a design study to the Decision Center. This is a powerful way to compare flow rate, pressure, and other data critical to making informed design decisions.

Positioning and Controlling Plane Appearance

Control

To move a Plane

Note: A plane can only move in a perpendicular direction.

To rotate a Plane

(To change the center of rotation, drag the triad within the Plane. The center of rotation is the triad origin.)

To align to a model surface

After invoking the Align to surface command, click the desired surface in the model. The plane moves to the selected surface, and is parallel to it. If the selected surface is not planar, the plane moves to the element face closest to the selection point on the surface.

To change the appearance

To change the displayed result quantity

To save results on a Plane

Clipping improves the visibility of specific model regions, and is a powerful way to display vectors when the model is shaded.

Vectors

To enable vectors or to change the vector quantity

To change vector appearance

To control the vector density

Click More... to make the following changes:

To control the display of arrowheads

To show regions where the active vector is within a specified range:

  1. Check Filtering.
  2. Enter a range in the Min and Max fields.

Click Reset or uncheck Filtering to display the entire model.

Plane Functionality

Planes provide a wide array of visualization functionality:

Accessing Plane Functionality

Note: Ensure Planes is selected on the Results Tasks panel.
  1. Settings (Controls)
  2. Traces
  3. XY Plot
  4. Bulk

Using a Plane to Trace Particles in the Flow

Particle Traces are similar to an injected dye in the flow. They are a very powerful method of visualizing the behavior of the flow within your design.

By default, particle traces do not have mass, so their movement is only influenced by the flow. Adding mass causes the trace to behave more like a physical substance within a flow system.

Adding Particle Traces

To create a set of Particle Traces

  1. Create a results plane, and open the Trace dialog.
  2. Select a Seeding method.
  3. Click Add points.
  4. Click points on the Plane (or drag the grid).
  5. Click Add trace set.

Pick on plane

To select seed point locations, left click on the Results Plane.

Key-in

Key in the exact X,Y, and Z coordinates. Separate each coordinate with a comma. (Do not surround the coordinates with brackets or parentheses.) These coordinates do not have to be on the Results Plane.

Rectangular grid

Draw a rectangle on the active Results Plane by clicking three locations: the top two corners and a lower corner:

Specify the number of grid points in the Width and Height fields.

Use the Grid Spacing option to create a uniform distribution of traces throughout the entire results plane.

To adjust the Grid spacing density:

  1. Enable vectors on the results plane.
  2. On the Vector settings tab of the Plane Control dialog, drag the Grid spacing slider.

Circular grid

Draw a circle on the active Results Plane by first clicking on the center of the circular grid, and then dragging the circle to the desired radius and clicking again:

Specify the number of points in the radial and circumferential directions in the Width and Height fields, respectively.

Residence Time

The time that a trace takes to traverse through the model is its residence time, and is listed for each trace. Residence time can vary based on the flow, the geometry, and if the particle has mass.

A trace with a relatively longer residence time than the rest will affect animation. Such a trace will animate very slowly followed by a very rapid animation of the others.

Setting the Appearance

To view, sort, and modify traces

  1. To view the trace list, click the Trace list... button.
  2. To sort traces, click the column headers.
  3. To modify trace appearance, right click on Set, and select Set properties....

There are several available trace types. Select the desired type from the Appearance menu.

Cylinders

Spheres

The animation method for Spheres is slightly different from the other trace types. Instead of simply incrementing through the length of the trace, spheres “emit” from the source. This produces a very informative effect that illustrates the flow path throughout the entire model.

Note that sphere traces are only drawn forward, so no spheres will appear upstream of the originating surface.

Lines

Points

Ribbons

Comets

Additional attributes

Animation

Deleting Particle Traces

Measuring and Plotting Data on a Plane

In addition to visual feedback of the flow and thermal behavior, the results plane also provides access to quantitative results. There are three ways to measure results in real time:

Probe with the Mouse

Create XY Plots

Create an XY plot by selecting points on a cutting surface, by entering point coordinates, or with points saved from a previous plot. The maximum number of points in an xy plot is 500.

Step 1: Create a Results Plane and open the XY Plot dialog

Step 2: Select the method of point selection:

Note: You can use saved point locations to create a plot on a different scenario.

Step 3: Enter a Title

Step 4: Change the Number of Divisions

Note: The number of divisions must between 2 and 500.

Step 5: Create the Plot

Save a table

This command saves a comma separated variable (".csv") file on a uniform distribution of points throughout the plane.

To change the number of points saved to the table, modify the Grid spacing resolution on the Vector settings tab:

Using a Plane to Measure Bulk Values

The Bulk Calculator quickly calculates and shows bulk-weighted results on a Results Plane. Bulk (mass-weighted) results are automatically updated as the active Plane is moved.

Workflow

Start by positioning the Results Plane in the desired location.

  1. Open the Bulk dialog.
  2. Select the desired quantities for bulk calculation.
  3. Change the units of the output quantity with the adjacent menu list.
  4. Click the Calculate button.
  5. The bulk results are written to the Output tab.

To save bulk data when animating a transient analysis, click the Save button. The results from the active time steps will be saved to an Excel csv file.

Notes

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