I’ve had several folks ask why results for CBUSH spring forces or Grid Point Force Balance data (used for Freebody) was not appearing in FEMAP when the model was run from FEMAP, but they did show up when manually importing the results. Is this puzzling situation something that might need the investigative skills of Scooby-Doo.  Ruh Roh!

As it turns out, we won’t need to hand out any Scooby Snacks to solve this mystery. We just need to figure out what is happening when FEMAP imports the results.  Up through FEMAP 11.0, if you have the Results Destination set to “0..Default”, “2..PostProcess”, “5..Punch and PostProcess”, or “6..XDB”, FEMAP will read the results data out of the .op2 file (or the .xdb file when  “6..XDB” is used).  In this situation, all the results will be read.

But if you tell FEMAP to put in the results into “3..Print and Postprocess”, it will put the results into both the .f06 file and the .op2 file.  When FEMAP does the auto import of results, if it sees results in the .f06 file, it uses that for all results, and never imports results from the op2 file.  The problem happens because the FEMAP .f06 file reader, being older legacy code, does not support some items, including CBUSH forces or Grid Point force data.  The workaround is to manually import the .op2 file (File, Import, Analysis Results) which will trigger the use of the .op2 file reader.  There is no more work being done to add new features to the .f06 file reader, only to the .op2 file reader.

Starting with 11.1, the plan is to only use the .f06 file reader when the results destination is set to “1..Print Only”. The .op2 file reader will be used when Results Destination is set to “3..Print and PostProcess” and you will still get all of the info, warning, and error messages along with other stuff from the .f06 file (for instance, modal participation factors) which can’t be found in the .op2 or .xdb.