About Display Groups

You can focus on discrete areas of the model by selecting items and methods to filter your view. You can create display groups based on several criteria such as parts, entities, groups, values, labels, sets, and types. In addition, you can provide custom names for any display groups, facilitating re-use rather than creating them new each time.

For example, you can create display groups for one or more parts to isolate them during an analysis. In the hinge model below, you can create separate display groups for the left hinge, right hinge, and the pin.

You can then show or hide these display groups for any combination of the hinge parts. For example, if you want to see results for the top portion of the pin, you could hide the left hinge part. In the following example, the left hinge part is filtered from view by hiding the left hinge display group:

If you wanted to save this exact configuration (left hinge part hidden), you could use a custom name to recreate the view at any time.

Display groups can be based on entities (such as connectors, constraints, materials, or plies), types (such as elements, connectors, or restraints), and labels (a range of element and node labels). In addition, for native simulations that have multiple parts, display groups can be based on model groups or on sets.

Value filters allow you to change the model by filtering a variable (such as Stress) above or below a certain value or within a range of values. In addition, you can choose whether to enforce these rules on a specific step and frame or across all frames in the simulation. Value filters refine display group results dynamically for each step and frame you are viewing.

For display groups by entities, labels, values, or sets, you choose methods to further refine how the items are displayed. For example, if you filter on sets, you can then choose whether you want element sets, node sets, internal element sets, or internal node sets.

Once you determine the display groups that work best, you can save these unique selections by creating custom named display groups. You can also associate the named display group with the current plot.

Boolean operators enable you to replace all hidden parts and revert to the whole model view, switch what is visible and what is hidden, and further customize selected elements. For example, Intersect displays items in common with both your selection and the current view.

The display groups summary view provides a convenient way to edit, show, hide, or delete operators and filters that you have applied. When a named group's sequence of operations is used in the process of creating new display groups, these selection operations are displayed in nested trees under an editable selection group. This can be a powerful way to preserve complex scenarios.

For more information about specific types of display groups, see the Physics Results Explorer guide.

Digger selection is disabled while you work with display groups. For more information, see Hiding Objects Temporarily.