v0.60.0

v0.60.0 Release Notes

With the release of v0.60.0, we improve both the licensing check and patch the distributed memory parallel usage bug on Windows when running under a VPN. Other features and bug fixes for this release include:

Features

• Refactor logging to use a global logger for the library while tracking individual instances. Critical for tracking output from multiple instances of MAPDL.
• Add extended examples to our documentation.
• Add license check. Automatically watch the license debug file and include this in the raised exception when MAPDL fails to connect. Helpful for debugging failed starts, especially on VPN.
• Improve and extend existing inline-functions. Permit direct interface to MAPDL to allow for mute=True or NOPR.
• Add ip parameter on the launcher.

Bug-Fixes

• Patch NOPR usage. Disable whenever possible to avoid conflicting behavior when using pymapdl interactively.
• Use Windows MPI by default when launching MAPDL on Windows.
• Patch CDWRITE and other file operations to account for both local and remote execution.
• Wrap CMATRIX

Miscellaneous

• Variety of code refactoring to better follow PEP8 standards through flake8
• Improved documentation build performance.
• Usage of autoformatter black
• Add VM3-5 to the examples
• Use numpydoc for our documentation.

Thanks all for contributing!

• @jleonatti
• @germa89
• @jgd10

PyMAPDL 0.59.5 Release Notes

This is a patch release for PyMAPDL. Includes the following changes or additions:

Features

• New option to automatically create a SciPy Array + Fix for Float Sparse Arrays (#568)
• inline functions (#539, #540, #536, #534)

Bug Fixes

• Fix nplot parameters (#548)

Documentation

• Fix missing logo (#570) and remove version requirements for Jinja2 (#569)
• Fix additional switches documentation in (#565)
• Add contact element example (#546)
• Documentation cleanup (#533)
• Edited examples in docstrings to use new API (#552)

Patch Ignored Commands

Certain element checks within the solve command result in errors that are actually warnings and do not halt the solve. This release implements a patch that ignores those element distortion errors and instead passes them as a Python warning.

Refactored MAPDL Launcher

These release notes cover a variety of new features and bug fixes that have occured in the past year.

New Features

• Exchange vectors and arrays from numpy to MAPDL through the Mapdl class
• Better cyclic result processing, including cyclic strain, stress, temperature, etc.
• Element result plotting
• Support for newer ANSYS MAPDL releases (i.e. up to 2020R2)
• Support all element types in the result file.
• Interactive geometry plotting (e.g. KPLOT, APLOT, VPLOT) within pyansys using VTK. No reason to use open_gui for geometry scripting.
• Add support for Python 3.8
• Add sparse result file reading (necessary for latest ANSYS releases)

Bug fixes

• Element components are properly supported in result files
• Fix CORBA interface for ANSYS 2019R1
• Fix VTK 9 compatibility issues
• Fix various archive file formatting issues when reading.
• Fix negative/positive cyclic rotation issues.
• Correctly apply euler angles.
• Fix MAPDL executable finder.

API Changes

There's been a variety of API changes since the last release, and it's past time to list those changes and some of the reasoning behind those changes.

Use launch_mapdl instead of Mapdl

This is a bit more straightforward in terms of launching MAPDL since there are two methods for communicating with MAPDL at the moment, and it opens up MAPDL for additional interfaces

Remove uppercase methods from Mapdl

This was a necessary change to make the Mapdl class PEP8 compliant. While annoying to change, it's way better to provide a consistent interface like to other popular modules (numpy, scipy, matplotlib...)

Improved pyansys Interface and Translation

Added ability to translate scripts ANSYS input scripts directly to python scripts. See:
https://pyansys.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ansys_control.html#translating-scripts

Verified compatibility with ANSYS versions 15, 17, and 18.2 for

• Archive files
• Nodal results
• Element results

Bug with inaccurate nodal stress results for mixed nodes has been patched. pyansys now includes unit and functional testing to verify accuracy with ANSYS results.

See https://pyansys.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ for the latest documentation.

Added ANSYS Interface

Now able to spawn and control an instance of ANSYS. See the documentation below for more details:
http://pyansys.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ansys_control.html

Quick example:

import time
import pyansys

ansys = pyansys.ANSYS()

# create a square area using keypoints
ansys.Prep7()
ansys.K(1, 0, 0, 0)
ansys.K(2, 1, 0, 0)
ansys.K(3, 1, 1, 0)
ansys.K(4, 0, 1, 0)
ansys.L(1, 2)
ansys.L(2, 3)
ansys.L(3, 4)
ansys.L(4, 1)
ansys.Al(1, 2, 3, 4)

# Start a non-interactive plotting window
ansys.Show()
ansys.Menu('grph')
ansys.View(1, 1, 1, 1)  # sets the view to "isometric"

# Plot geometry while waiting between plots
ansys.Pnum('kp', 1)  # enable keypoint numbering
ansys.Pnum('line', 1)  # enable line numbering
ansys.Aplot()
time.sleep(1)  # could also use ansys.Wait(1)
ansys.Lplot()
time.sleep(1)
ansys.Kplot()
ansys.Save()
ansys.Exit()

Improved Full Reader

Mass and stiffness matrices from the full reader before 0.24 needed to have their constrained degrees of freedom removed from the arrays if they were constrained within ANSYS. These constrained degrees of freedom are now automatically removed.

The sort option has been added back. Sorting is disabled by default. See the latest release notes:
http://pyansys.readthedocs.io/en/latest/loading_km.html

Added single precision mesh quality check

Prior version needed to convert to double before checking cell quality.

Principal Stress Computation

Added principal stress computation and plotting. Example is in documentation and below:

pstress = result.PrincipalNodalStress(0)
result.PlotPrincipalNodalStress(0, 'SEQV')

See updated documentation at:
http://pyansys.readthedocs.io/en/latest/loading_results.html

Garbage Collection Fix and Updated Documentation

Due to limitations with vtkInterface, object were not being garbage collected when deleted. That's fixed now, along with the outdated documentation and examples.