Defining Couplings

You can use a coupling connection to join two supports using either a rigid or a spring-loaded connection behavior.

See Also
About Couplings
Connections Section
Connection Manager
About Engineering Connections in Simulations
Grouping Mesh Entities
In Other Guides
Support Selection
  1. From the Connections section of the action bar, click Coupling .
  2. Optional: Enter a descriptive Name.
  3. Choose an engineering connection method and connection.
    OptionDescription
    Default Automatically creates a free engineering connection or selects an existing engineering connection if only one exists.
    Select existing Select an existing engineering connection from a list.

    Note: If you select an existing connection, your support selections are limited to the part instances used when the engineering connection was created.

  4. Optional: Change the supports.

    The following supports are valid for coupling connections:

    • Support 1 can be one or more faces, edges, or vertices on a solid or shell; or mesh groups created under the mesh part and containing faces, edges, or nodes.

    • Support 2 can be any of the same type of selections. However, this support is not required if Support 1 is a face or edge. Without a second support, the simulation couples the face or edge to a reference point located at the centroid of the face or edge from Support 1.

    For 3D solid parts, you can select faces from more than two parts.

    Tip: You can right-click a support field and select Create Support to create a new point or to create a proximity, spatial, or manual mesh group containing the support objects.

    Supports cannot include faces that are defined as analytical rigid surfaces. You can use the context menu in the Connection Manager to reuse supports from an existing connection. However, supports can be reused only if they meet the requirements of the current connection type.

    For couplings between any supports other than single points, for example between a face and an edge, a handler point is created midway between the first and second supports at each end. By default, the handler points are connected rigidly; an elastic connection is used if you specify spring behavior.

  5. Optional: To load coupling properties from a saved template file:
    1. Click .
      The Object Selection dialog box appears.
    2. Select one of the following options:

      • Search and select a template document from all the documents stored in the database.
      • Click Import a file to import a document stored on your computer, and click the check mark in the object selection prompt after the document has been imported.

    The parameters are applied to the current coupling definition.
  6. Optional: Click to save the parameters of the current coupling to a reusable template document, and specify a name for the document. For more information, see Template Files.
  7. Enter the coupling options. For more information, see Coupling Options.
  8. Optional: Click Update Mesh to see the mesh created for the coupling.
  9. Click OK.