Week 6-Introduction to Ansys ACT Challenge

1. Answer the questions:

• What is an API?
• What are binary and Scripted Extensions?

Ans:

1.a) ANSYS ACT is the unified and consistent tool for the customization and expansion of ANSYS products.Using ACT, you can create extensions to customize these products:

•    workbench
• • Mechanical
  • AIM
  • DesignModeler
  • DesignXplorer
  • Electronics Desktop
  • Fluent
  • SpaceClaim

ACT supports customization of ANSYS products with a set of interfaces.The high-level member interfaces of the APIs expose the properties and methods that allow access to the underlying product data.The extensions that are loaded by the Workbench Extension Manager are each configured and initialized to support Python scripting. For each extension, a global variable ExtAPI gives access to the property DataModel. This property returns the object IDataModel, which has properties that return all of the high-level interfaces available for customizations.

An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface offering a service to other pieces of software.A document or standard that describes how to build such a connection or interface is called an API specification. A computer system that meets this standard is said to implement or expose an API. The term API may refer either to the specification or to the implementation.

In contrast to a user interface, which connects a computer to a person, an application programming interface connects computers or pieces of software to each other. It is not intended to be used directly by a person (the end user) other than a end programmer who is incorporating it into software. An API is often made up of different parts which act as tools or services that are available to the programmer. A program or a programmer that uses one of these parts is said to call that portion of the API. The calls that make up the API are also known as subroutines, methods, requests, or endpoints. An API specification defines these calls, meaning that it explains how to use or implement them.

One purpose of APIs is to hide the internal details of how a system works, exposing only those parts a programmer will find useful and keeping them consistent even if the internal details later change. An API may be custom-built for a particular pair of systems, or it may be a shared standard allowing interoperability among many systems.

1.b)

An ACT license is required to create and build extensions. However, an ACT license is not required to
execute extensions.

2. Perform the following

• Install the given scripted extensions
• Delete GUID from given scripted extension and try to install it, read the log file.
• From the scripted extensions, create a Binary extensions and install it in workbench

 Ans:

Inorder to install the scripted extension.the first thing is to save the given scripted file in extensions> act folder.Now the folder is then accessd through the following method.

When we open the act start page,then you can see a symbol of settings,there we can specif the location of the scripted file.And then put the debug mode ON.Now when you open extension manager,you can see the the selection toolbar icon as below:

when you press,manage extensions,you can see the scripted extension installed.

Now the next task is to convert it to binary extensions,which can be done through the following method as below:

In the first section,select the selection tool bar which is the scripted extension installed and then in the output folder section select the location where to save the binary extension and click which security option for sharing,Now your binary extension will be build.

 Now we are asked to delete the given guid and try installing it,here we have to first open the saved xml selection toolbar document in an editors like sublime.And then delete the given guid.Now load the given scripted extension and then start building the binary extension.Now it will show the following.

 Now copy the given guid in the message and start doing the same procedure.The binary extension would be build as below:

Now the binary extension has been build.

3. Perform the following

Install the 'Selection Toolbar' binary extension and import the given gear model. Using the 'Selection Toolbar' option, create named selections for the below given specifications:

• All the cylindrical faces in the gears
• All the common edges of the gears
• All the faces smaller than 10 mm^2
• All the vertices of the faces smaller than 10 mm^2

• Select entities smaller than the cylindrical surfaces

Ans.

The selection tool converted to binary extension is installed.We can see this by moving to emanage extension in the tool bar as below.

now move to the geometry section in the workbench and then import the given gear model.With the installed selection tool bar we have to create some named selections.Open selection tool bar menu in the tool bar section .

(A)All the cylindrical faces in the gears

click on the selection tool bar and then load the extension.After than we can see the loaded extension in the tool bar section as given below:

we can use the functions provided in the drop downs under each function and then perform the tasks specified.Now select the cylindrical faces and then right click and give a named selection as given in the figure.

(b)All the common edges of the gears

Move to selection operations and under that select the edges common to faces.

we can see that if we click common edges of the gears,there are 102 edges ans they are selected.

(c)All the faces smaller than 10 mm^2

Select the size given and then under that select all faces smaller than 10 mm^2.And then the following will get displlayed as given below:

(d)All the vertices of the faces smaller than 10 mm^2

Here we can convert the selection to vertices and then select the faces and vertices smaller than 10 mm^2 and the above figure gets displayed with 412 vertices selected.

(e)Select entities smaller than the cylindrical surfaces

The surfaces smaller than the cylindrical surfaces and were showing the following selection for entities smaller than the selection of cylindrical surfaces.