How To Size with Orphan Laminates

Effective Laminates can be generated directly from the Design Property form, which can be launch either from right clicking on the Material field of the Design Property and choosing "Generate Effective Laminates" (after selecting a Tape or Fabric Material), OR by clicking the Effective Laminates button on the Material tab of the Ribbon. See Create Effective Laminates.

The Material field of the Design Property will be automatically updated with the generated Effective Laminates if the Effective Laminate form was launched from the Design Property. However, the selection can also be modified by the user by right-clicking in the Material field and choosing "Select Effective Laminates".

Select the Zones with the Effective Laminate Design Property and Size them.

Once Sizing with the Effective Laminates is complete, the optimum result from each Zone can be used to generate Discrete Laminates to further refine the solution. The Discrete Laminate generation form is launched from the Design Property form by right-clicking on the Material selection field and choosing "Generate Laminates".

The Discrete Laminate generation form contains a table of Effective Laminate Sizing results for all Zones that have the current Design Property assigned to them. Each row in the table corresponds to a Zone. The columns display the optimized Thickness and Ply Angle Percentages for each Zone. The view can also be toggled with the radio button above the table to display the result in terms of Ply Count for each Ply Angle.

The above data will become the inputs to the Discrete Laminate generation and can be modified by the user if desired (this will not have an impact on the existing Sizing results with Effective Laminates currently saved in the Database).

When the "Generate" button is clicked, HyperX will create Discrete Laminates that target the Thickness and Ply Angle Percentages shown in the table for each Zone. The user can specify the maximum number of Laminates generated with the input at the bottom left of the form (this number may not be met for thinner Laminates). These Laminates will have a variety of stacking sequences but will all be of similar Thickness and Ply Angle Percentage.

Additional control over the generated Discrete Laminates is provided by the Ply Angle % Limits and the Layup Rules, both of which can be pulled up with the buttons at the bottom-right of the form.

The generated Orphan Laminates will be automatically assigned to the Material field of the Design Property. Each Zone will have a specific set of Laminates assigned to as Sizing Candidates; this is indicated by the blue 'X' next to the Material field. The Material field itself displays the total number of Laminates assigned to all Zones using the current Design Property.

The last step is to simply select all of the Zones that have been assigned the current Design Property and run Sizing. This will select the optimum Discrete Laminate for each Zone.

Zone-by-Zone Laminate solutions are translated to a part-level Ply layup scheme via Sequencing. Sequencing is usually performed after sizing with Discrete Laminates to generate final Plies.