How To Generate Grid Stiffened Concepts

Objective: Generate CAD Entities that represent the grid of a HyperX grid-stiffened panel for the purpose of exporting optimized geometry to CAD software.

This utility is used to create a CAD "unit" grid representation of Sizing results placed at the centroid of each Zone.

The generated geometry will reflect the concept, thicknesses, stiffener spacing, etc. of the Sizing results. It is intended to be exported to an external tool and used by CAD designers as a reference for populating a CAD model based on HyperX Sizing results.

Prerequisites

Zones with a grid concept assigned (See here to generate Stiffeners/Beams).
Sizing results using the Detailed Sizing mode.

Step #1: Select Zones and Open Form

Select the Zones that you want to generate grid stiffened geometry for.
Select "Generate CAD Stiffeners" from the Model Tab of the Ribbon.
Select "Grids" from the dropdown menu and view the "Generate CAD Geometry" Form.

Step #2: Select Settings for Generation

From the form you can select from a number of settings to generate the grid geometry that you want.

Three settings control what geometry is generated and where.

Include skin - Toggles whether or not the skin is generated along with the stiffeners.
Include fillets - Toggles whether or not fillets are included at stiffener intersections. When active, the user can input a fillet radius.
Opposite Normal - Determines which side of the mesh the grid is generated. By default, the grids are generated opposite of the element normals, which is the standard HyperX analysis approach. If the option is inactive, the grids will be generated on the same side as the element normal vectors.

The image above shows grids generated for adjacent Zones with the same element normal direction. The grid on the right was generated with "Opposite Normal" selected.

Two types of 3D profiles are available for the generated grids.

Surface - Generated by lofting the grid profile along the axis of the grid. Results in a grid profile with openings at either end.
Solid Geometry - Similar to the above, except the output grid is a Solid Entity with closed ends.

Note

There is no visual difference when rendered in the Viewport, but you can see that they create two different types of entities by viewing the results in the CAD Tree.

Step #3: Generate Geometry

Clicking the Apply button will generation CAD geometry according to the selected settings. The generated geometry will be organized into folders in the CAD Tree according to the parent Zone (from which the grid dimensions were acquired). The geometry is also automatically associated with the Zone and will be selected whenever the Zone itself is selected.

Subsequent Actions

Export CAD Entities