CAE terminology and concepts

In CAD, you work primarily with parts and assemblies of part files, which are all stored in .prt files. In the simplest CAE model, you work with two files:

• The FEM file (.fem), which is the file that contains all of the mesh data and well as physical and material properties for that mesh data. The FEM file also contains polygon geometry, which is a tessellated (faceted) version of the CAD geometry.

• The Simulation file (.sim), which is the file that contains boundary conditions and solver-specific data.The Simulation file is actually an assembly that contains a FEM file as its only component. The component FEM file acts as the master model for the Simulation file. Because multiple Simulation files can include the same FEM file as a component, you can reuse mesh data for different analyses.

In addition to FEM and Simulation files, you can also work with the following additional types of files:

• Theidealized part file (_i.prt ) is an associative copy of a part file. You can create an idealized part file to manage analysis-specific geometry modifications that you want to manage independent of the original CAD data.

• The assembly FEM file is a file type that you can use to create CAE models that consist of multiple FEM files. An assembly FEM file serves as the master model for a Simulation file. It contains occurrence and position data for component FEM files, as well as connection elements (which connect the component FEMs into a system) and property overrides.

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NX Open for CAE terminology and concepts

CAD terminology and concepts

The importance of the work part in CAE applications

Overview of the CAE data model

Working with objects in the CAE data model

Overview of the CAE solver languages

Working with the CAE solver languages: name strings

Working with the CAE solver languages: property tables

Creating undo marks and forcing model updates

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