I feel I am missing something - when I go into the results graphics area and look at the results I never get the colour range that I am suppose to see. For example when I view the stress colours by percentage button I can see the hoops colour legend at the side, but the results are never shown in the model in colour.

Is there a setting or something i need to turn on?

I thought the same, but on zooming in I found branches with high stress are in fact coloured, albeit rather locally.

Hi moverz

Like you I have found that you can sometimes see the overstressed points coloured in red but not always all the overstressed points hence I do not rely on this feature to give me accurate results. Given the colour legend I was expecting the results to be a nice blended full colour plot, similar to results you uwould get graphically in a programme like nozzle pro or other FEA packages.

CAESAR II will never behave like this. CAESAR II uses simple "3D Beam Elements", there is no real mesh like you would have in an FEA package. The colors shown in those plots are an interpolation between the two values assigned to the nodes. This is why there can sometimes be a disconnect between two elements - node 10 on the from end of one elment may only be stressed to 40% of the allowable, while node 10 on the 'to' end of the next element might be stressed to 120% of the allowable. You won't have that if you had a mesh with more complex elements.

You may be able to improve things by using more nodes, but that seems like a lot of work just to improve color shading.

well I thought that might be wishful thinking to get a mesh like output, however I would be happy to settle for some colour.

Given I see a colour legend at the side of my model graphics screen, I expect to see some colour shading in my results but I see nothing but the odd hint of red at the overstressed points if I look really really closely.

Exactly!

Itchy is right as far as my situation is concerned. Hoop stress legend did show up but the color plots in graphical area are NONE even if i zoom to like 10000 times to the areas (which i know are stressed enough).

I have Caesar 5.10 and after installing this to many many PCs i get the same result.

I have been working for 5 years in AutoPipe (Bentley's Piping Stress program) and believe me when you have a huge piping network to analyze these color plots are just the right thing to catch overstressed points more accurately and timely.

I have been trying hard to solve this problem in Caesar 5.10 but with Zero results so far even after googling this problem alot.

Can somebody with experience or someone from COADE would like to explain the problem in our system / graphics card/driver etc which might be causing that problem ?

One more thing! I just downloaded the Demo version of Caesar 5.20 and to my surprise i can see Color stress plots in graphical area for every model/sample i made or opened.

In the attached bmp snapshot it is clearly visible that overstressed points 38-39-40 are not showing any sign of color stress plotting.

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Salz

The graphics in the "Demo" are the same as in the "Production Version". This plot shows the "stress color" option does indeed work.



Send your job in to techsupport@coade.com so we can see what is happening at nodes 38-39-40.

Thanks Richard for your comments.

I think and infact i'm sure now that Caesar II files have nothing to do with the color stress display 'not working' i.e. No matter whichever file I select for analysis sample or new i get the same "Colorless graphics of code stres". You have all the sample files with you and i've the same one checked for that specific build.

Hence the build/direct-X/graphics driver/ might be the cause of this error and for your reference please note the version i have is: 5.10.00 (Build 070917)

Let me know if you have any patch file for the correction of graphics which i'm sure you had 2 years back when this build was released.

*There was en error regarding my previous attachment so i'm attaching again.

Regards,
Salz

We don't have patches for graphics drivers, these must be obtained (if available) from your graphics board vendor. If you suspect a graphics driver issue, try switching the CAESAR II Configuration from OPENGL to "Windows Basic Video", and see if that helps.

I have a different question about viewing results of stress contours.
In CAESAR II when looking at 3D stress contour results in static output processor, is there a way to turn off the pipe reflections on the 3D model? This would make it easier to see the results.

In the Configuration, go to the "Graphics Settings" pane. Under "Miscellaneous Options", try changing the "Default Render Mode". The 'flat' option may be what you want.

Thanks Richard for your suggestion. I tried adjusting the render mode to Flat but it does not update anything. To check this I changed render mode to single line and triangulated and both of these options did show in the model.
However when adjusting any 3D shading option like Flat, Phong or Gouraud the result stays the same.
Is there a way to turn off the light source in the model, especially in results "Static output processor" window?
Thanks.

Unfortunately there is no option specifically targeting the light source.