Hi, I’m Alexander Bausk and this is my main weblog published primarily in English. My other weblog – structural.wordpress.com – is in Russian, so beware.
I am a structural/civil engineer and CAD professional, so structural engineering is main topic here as well as stuff related to AutoCAD.
Occasionally, I publish some travel reports.
My engineering portfolio is pending publishing here – someday.
This blog’s goal is to give fellow engineers and friends an updated information source about my work (like finite element analysis, enigneering software or AutoCAD programming and CAD management on tarpacad.wordpress.com). You also might be interested in reading and downloading my CV.
Write me to bauskas@gmail.com if you want to discuss anything.
Pic related:
P.s. Meshing in RSA using imported geometry is total hell.
Somehow the 3dfaces in AutoCAD do not fit properly when using OSNAP and the mesher goes mad/
Well, I’m bulldozing my way through a bunch of meshing problems in Robot SA now.
Image: Reactor cavity finite element model, working draft.
I hope I’ll end up having a nice and smooth FEM of the VVER-440 reactor compartment.
The next stage is seamless integration of the steel superstructure and the surrounding concrete substructure into united FE model of the whole reactor unit.
The list of recent improvements in the new BricsCAD version is rather impressive.
Keep up the good work, B. Someday you’ll match the earlier AutoCAD releases and we will all migrate and dump the horrile 3D monster AutoCAD mutated into.
: – )
Here is another teaser of the future description of WWER-440 power reactor building FEM.
Comes hot right off my monitor:
It shows how the internal geometry for concrete walls and concrete containment are modeled using 3DFACE entities to be later exported to Robot SA.
I’ve just finished modeling geometry of a VVER-440 power reactor building. I’m completely bushed yet very glad I managed to do it.
It’s just the steel part of it. Under the trusses will reside the concrete containment and auxiliary structures.
Now a lot of work has to be done further. It’s just an AutoCAD 3D model. It has to be imported to the FEA solver’s preprocessor, crunched a bit to mitigate some minor errors; then materials would be applied, sections specified. Then, a lot of work to specify coupled nodes, etc.
At last, static and dynamic loads will be applied, including seismic and aircraft impact, then comes solving the resulting finite element model, and a heck of messing with the apparently irrelevant results. After that, detailed analysis of structural members and writing about 80 pages of final safety assessment report. Man, I’m bushed.
When I’ll be finished, perphaps I’ll give a little more detail about how it was done.
Also, it’ll make for a great entry into the would-be portfolio.
Attached follows a screenshot of Robot SA 2009 documentation.
The software to which this sheet pertains has been released by Autodesk in 2008 as I remember. Prior to this, Autodesk acquired RoboBAT, the developer of Robot finite element analysis package.
I posted this sheet to illustrate the current state of Robot documentation, which is frozen at a level of maybe v15. Since the acquisition, Autodesk did fairly nothing to improve the accompanying documentation and very little to improve the program itself.
I understand that their primary target is developing BIM technology and liaison with Revit, but this is no excuse to dump those wishing to have more control of the FE analysis process than the BIM allows.
Also, Autodesk charges four-digit numbers for the right to use Robot SA with documentation coming from pre-Windows 2000 era.
PS. Thus ends the Autodesk Rant Series.
WorldCAD Access writes about Tim Vernor winning a lawsuit against Autodesk. In essense the buzz is about reselling used AutoCAD copies without involving The Mighty and Holy Autodesk.
As many know, copyright infringement poses a serious problem in many countries including East Europe. I personally think that buying used copies at a reasonable price is an excellent way to get legal in scope of software use.Anyway, buying new AutoCAD at full price would render any consulting business here unprofitable. Actually, many people don’t need the fancy new versions, they’d better invest in writing customization codes to fit own needs.
Changed blog theme to some other theme. Looks un-cool enough for the blog with semi-professional content.
