3/22/2019 Writing Text files with *VWRITE – PADT, Inc.

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Writing Text files with *VWRITE

by Eric Miller  May 18, 2012  9:27 am  1 Comment  The Focus

A very common need in the world of ANSYS FEA simulation is to write text to a text file
from within Mechanical APDL. Sometimes you are running in MAPDL, sometimes you are
using ANSYS Mechanical but you still need to write stuff out using APDL with a code
snippet. The way most people do that is with *VWRITE.

Originally written to write out data in arrays, it is a very flexible and powerful command
that can be used to write pretty much any type of formatted output. Something that every
ANSYS user should have in their back pocket.

The Command

*VWRITE, Par1, Par2, Par3, Par4, Par5, Par6, Par7, Par8, Par9, Par10, Par11, Par12,
Par13, Par14, Par15, Par16, Par17, Par18, Par19

Looks pretty simple right, just *vwrite and list what you want printed. But there is a lot
more to this command.

A Lot More

First off you need to open up a file to write to. You have a couple of options.

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1. *CFOPEN,fname, ext, –, Loc
assume that you are happy with it.
This opens the specified file for writing with *cfwrite and *vwrite commands. This is
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the preferred method.
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2. /output,fname, ext, –, Loc

By default *VWRITE output to standard output – the jobname.out (batch) file or the
command window (interactive). So if you use /output you can redirect to a file
instead of the *.out or screen. We don’t recommend this because other stuff might
get written as well to the file.

Now you have a place to write to, next you need to use *VWRITE to write. *VWRITE is a
unique command because it actually uses two lines. The first contains *VWRITE and a list
of parameters and/or arrays to write and the second contains a format statement. We
will cover the first line first, and the format second.

Parameter Arguments for *VWRITE

As you can see from the command, you can have up to 19 parameters listed on a
*VWRITE command. PAR1 through PAR19 can be array, scalar, or character parameters.
They can also be a constant. This is where the real flexibility comes in. You can do
something like (just look at the *VWRITE line, we will talk about the rest further on):

1: adiv = ' | '

2: *dim,nds, ,10

3: *dim,temps,,10

4: *vfill,nds(1),ramp,1,1

5: *vfill,temps(1),rand,70,1500

6: *cfopen,vw1.out

7: *VWRITE,'Temp: ',nds(1),temps(1),adiv, 'TREF: ',70

8: (A6,F8.0,g16.8,A3,A6,F10.4)

9: *cfclose

This mixes characters, arrays, and constants in one command. As output you get:

Temp: 1. 429.56308 | TREF: 70.0000

Temp: 2. 263.55403 | TREF: 70.0000
Temp: 3. 1482.8411 | TREF: 70.0000
Temp: 4. 605.95819 | TREF: 70.0000
Temp: 5. 782.33391 | TREF: 70.0000
Temp: 6. 1301.1332 | TREF: 70.0000
Temp: 7. 1119.4253 | TREF: 70.0000
Temp: 8. 202.87298 | TREF: 70.0000
Temp: 9. 1053.4121 | TREF: 70.0000
Temp: 10. 805.71033 | TREF: 70.0000

Array Parameters
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The first thing you will notice is no *do loop. If you supply an array parameter, *vwrite
loops on the parameter from the given index (1 in this case) to the end of the array. But if
you don’t want the whole array written, you can control by placing *VLEN and/or *VMASK
in front of the *VWRITE command:

*VLEN,nrow,ninc
This will only write out nrow times, skipping based on ninc (defaults to 1)
As an example, if you want to write just the fourth value in array A() you
would do:
*VLEN,1
*VWRITE,A(4)
(G16.8)
*VMASK,Par
You make a mask array of 0’s and 1 that is the same size as your array, and supply it
to *VMASK. *VWRITE will only write out values for your array if the mask array is
not zero for the same index.

You can have a multiple dimensions on your array. *VWRITE only increments the first
index. Say you specify X, Y, and Z coordinates in an array call xyz. It would look like:

 *VWRITE,xyz(1,1),XYZ(1,3),XY
Z(1,3)
(3G16.8)

String Parameters

Being an older program, you are limited in what you can do with character parameters.
You are limited to 8 characters. So you just use a long string parameter several times and
increment the index by 8:

1: *dim,mystring,string,80

2: mystring(1) = 'This is a very long sentance'

3: *cfopen,vw2.out

4: *VWRITE,mystring(1), mystring(9), mystring(17), mystring(25), mystring(33)

5: (5A)

6: *cfclose

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Kind of hokey, but it works.
assume that you are happy with it.

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Integers
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3/22/2019 Writing Text files with *VWRITE – PADT, Inc. – The Blog

Sigh. This is the one thing that I’m not fond of in *VWRITE. The original command did not
support outputting integer values. That is because the FORTRAN I descriptor was not
supported, and ANSYS stores everything as an integer anyhow. But people needed to
output integer values so they took the ‘C’ format routines for *MSG and made them work
with *VWRITE. So you can do a %I. See the section on ‘C’ formatting below for more
information on this.

Close the File

Before you can do anything with the file you create you need to close it. Not to hard:
*CFCLOSE does the trick.

Other Stuff you Need to Know

Don’t put a blank in there. If you do, *vwrite stops looking at parameters. So if you need
a blank in your file, put in a space ‘ ‘ or use the X FORTRAN descriptor.

Be aware of *CFWRITE as well. It is a way to write APDL commands to a file. If what you
want to do is have your macro write a macro, *CFWRITE is better because you don’t have
to do format statements. And those can be a pain when you need commas.

If your arrays are of different lengths, *VWRITE will loop for the length of the longest
array. Any shorter arrays will be replaced with zeros for number arrays and blanks for
character/string arrays.

You can not use *VWRITE by pasting or typing into the command line. You have to read it
from a file.

Formatting
The key, and the difficult part of using *VWRITE is the format statement. We recommend
that you use the FORTRAN formatting when you are writing out large amounts of
columnar data, and use the ‘C’ format if you are writing out text rich information for a
report or to inform the user of something.

Many users today may not even know what a FORTRAN statement looks like. A good
place to look is:
http://www.stanford.edu/class/me200c/tutorial_77/17_format.html

Just remember that you can’t use the Integer (I) format. The list directed format (*) also
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does not work. If you are new to it also remember everything goes in parenthesis and it
assume that you are happy with it.
has to fit on one line. It does not have to start in column 8 (if you think that is funny, you
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are old)
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3/22/2019 Writing Text files with *VWRITE – PADT, Inc. – The Blog

As to ‘C’ formatting, you have a lot more options but we have found that the behavior is
not as consistent between Linux and windows as the FORTRAN. But if you are more
comfortable with ‘C’, do that. Not all of ‘C’ formatting works in APDL, but what does is
actually documented under the *MSG command.

Making it Work
We always recommend you work out your *VWRITE issues in a small macro that you can
run over and over again as you work out the formatting. If you are writing a snippet for
ANSYS Mechanical. Go ahead and save your model, bring it up in MAPDL, then work on
your *VWRITE statement till you get it right.

Some other useful suggestions are:

Keep things simple. Don’t try and format a novel or an HTML page with *VWRITE.
You probably could, but there are better tools for that.
Make sure you understand arrays, how they work in APDL, and how you have yours
dimensioned.
Get familiar with *VMASK and *VLEN. They are useful

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One Reply to “Writing Text files with *VWRITE”

CC
JULY 23, 2013 AT 3:36 AM

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will
Hi Eric. assume that you are happy with it.
There is an easier way to write large strings that makes use of the the C format
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3/22/2019 Writing Text files with *VWRITE – PADT, Inc. – The Blog

descriptor:

*dim,mystring,string,80
mystring(1) = ‘This is a string of up to 80 characters’
*CFOPEN,’file’,txt
*VWRITE,mystring(1)
%C
*CFCLOSE

Kind regards
Christian

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