Defining Surface Fasteners

You can join multiple bodies with a fastened connection that extends over one or more surfaces.

See Also
About Surface Fasteners
Detecting Surface Fastener Locations and Applying Surface Fasteners
Connections Section
Connection Manager
About Engineering Connections in Simulations
In Other Guides
Support Selection
Entering Tabular Data
Material Behaviors
  1. From the Connections section of the action bar, click Surface Fastener .
  2. Choose an engineering connection method and connection.
    OptionDescription
    Default Automatically creates a free engineering connection or selects the existing engineering connection if there is only one.
    Select existing Select an existing engineering connection from a list.

    Note: If you select an existing connection, you must choose a support from the part instances used when the engineering connection was created.

  3. Optional: Enter a descriptive Name.
  4. If required, edit the supports.

    The following supports are valid for surface fastener connections:

    • Support 1: one or more bodies or mesh parts
    • Support 2: one or more bodies or mesh parts

    You can use the context menu in the Feature Manager to reuse supports from an existing connection. However, supports can be reused only if they meet the requirements of the current connection type.

    Tip: You can click to clip the selection area to show only the smallest part—this can make it easier to pick the more detailed Fastener placement geometry you need. After you activate the clipping box, you can click to drag the box edges to resize it.

  5. Optional: To load fastener 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 from all the template 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 fastener definition.
  6. Optional: Click to save the parameters of the current fastener to a reusable template document, and specify a name for the document. For more information, see Template Files.
  7. Specify a material for the fastener by clicking and searching.
  8. Select a material behavior.

    This option is available only if the material has multiple behaviors defined.

  9. Select one or more surfaces to define the Fastener placement.

    The selected surfaces must be in reasonable proximity of the fastener location—along or between the bodies that the fastener is connecting.

    Warning: There are no restrictions on the surfaces that you can select to create the fastener. Selection of an inappropriate surface might cause the connection to fail during simulation.

  10. From the Weighting Method options, select one of the following:
    OptionDescription
    Uniform Maintains an equal weight factor for all nearest nodes (nodes in the mesh element faces containing the projected location).
    Tied Weights each node based on the shape of the mesh element face that contains the projected location (available for linear meshes only).
  11. Enter a Maximum projection distance.

    This distance defines the maximum gap between the bodies you are connecting. The fastener is not created if the bodies are farther apart at any point.

  12. Enter the Height, Mesh size, and Number of layers for the fastener.

    The height is the actual height of the fastener; for example, the height of a weld bead. The mesh size is the approximate element size to use, and the number of layers indicates how many mesh elements are expected through the fastener height.

  13. Optional: Click Update Mesh to see the mesh created for the surface fastener.
  14. Click OK.