(note that the location of that decimal point is critical).

Therefore, instead of defining a Node in your model as: Instead, arguments for commands are separated by commas. It was much easier to use than the other programs out there because the commands you entered didn’t have to be formatted in columns. (another plug) Some APDL BasicsĪPDL was developed back in the day of punch cards. If you want to learn more about how to program with APDL, you can purchase a copy of our “ Introduction to the ANSYS Parametric Design Language” book. We will focus on the actual commands you use to do things in the program here. It also has control logic, functions, and other capabilities that you find in most scripting languages. It is a truly parametric command language in that you can replace most values in commands with parameters. We are not going to give too much detail on their usage, the APDL help is fantastic, and it explains everything.Īlso, note that we are not getting into how to script with APDL.

Well, actually, it is more than 20 because we grouped some of them together. So, as a way to get ANSYS Mechanical users out there started down the road of loving APDL commands, we got together and came up with a list of 20 APDL commands that every user should know. In fact, I was in a room next to one of our support engineers while they were showing a customer how to change the elements that the solver would solve (Mechanical defaults to the most common formulation, but you can change them to whatever still makes sense) and the user had to admit he had never really used or even seen APDL commands before. But new users did not get the chance to be exposed to the power of APDL (ANSYS Parametric Design Language), so getting access to those advanced capabilities can be tough. So to access all those features, you just need to enter in the commands you want.įor many older users, this is not a problem because we grew up using the text commands.

MAPDL is a good old-fashioned command-driven program that takes in text commands one line at a time and executes them. This is awesome because you, as a user, have complete and full access to the huge breadth and depth available in the MAPDL program. One of the most powerful things about ANSYS Mechanical is the fact that it creates an input file of APDL commands that is sent to ANSYS Mechanical APDL (MAPDL) to solve. We have recently updated it a bit, and added some additional links at the bottom that you should check out, including an interview with John Swanson, the man who invented APDL. This shows how powerful the APDL language is and how building Ansys Mechanical on top of MAPDL was a good move. Editors note: For over ten years, this article has been PADT’s most popular post.

Useful ansys commands apdl