ANSYS ACT 19.

0 Known Issues and Limitations

 ANSYS ACT 19.0 Known Issues and Limitations

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 ANSYS ACT 19.0 Known Issues and Limitations

Table of Contents

ANSYS ACT 19.0 Known Issues and Limitations ............................................................................................ 1

Limitations on ACT postprocessing of Mechanical results ....................................................................... 1

ACT Debugger is not currently supported on Linux platform or from AIM .............................................. 2

ACT is unable to create a chart from Mechanical .................................................................................... 2

Graphic API Issues in DesignModeler and Mechanical when no extensions are loaded ......................... 2

Starting the ACT Start Page on Linux can cause an unexpected shutdown ............................................. 2

On Linux, using the ACT API to access ElementNode results always returns 0 ........................................ 2

Limitation on localization support ............................................................................................................ 3

Automation API UI thread and performance ........................................................................................... 3

 ANSYS ACT 19.0 Known Issues and Limitations

ANSYS ACT 19.0 Known Issues and Limitations

This document lists known issues and limitations in the ACT 19.0 release.

Limitations on ACT postprocessing of Mechanical results

If you use ACT for postprocessing Mechanical results, you should be aware of the following limitations:

Scoping for custom results

Custom results do not support using a geometric path as scoping. You can only use a selection of nodes
and elements as scoping.

Results not available with ACT postprocessing API

The ACT postprocessing API can access only results stored in the result (RST) file. The non-RST file results
are listed in the table below and defined with their result code or component labels.

Result Code Description

SERR Elemental structural error energy

TERR Elemental thermal error energy

BERR Elemental magnetic error energy

Component Label Description

SUM Vector sum

MSUM Mass sum

SFSUM Surface force sum

1, 2, 3 Principal

INT Intensity

EQV Equivalent

MAXSHEAR Maximum shear

VECTORS Vectors

WRAPPING_FACTOR Wrapping factor

1
 ANSYS ACT 19.0 Known Issues and Limitations

ACT Debugger is not currently supported on Linux platform or

from AIM
Due to technology differences, the ACT Debugger is not currently supported on the Linux platform or
from AIM. In 19.0, it is supported only on the Windows platform from the Project page in Workbench
and from DesignModeler and Mechanical.

ACT is unable to create a chart from Mechanical

When using ACT to create a figure from the chart API, the following error prevents the graphics display
in the Mechanical window:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

As a workaround, add the following code to your script to create an empty window in which the chart
can display:

import clr
clr.AddReference("Ans.UI.Toolkit")
clr.AddReference("Ans.UI.Toolkit.Base")
import Ansys.UI.Toolkit
if Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Window.MainWindow == None:
Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Window.MainWindow = Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Window()

Graphic API Issues in DesignModeler and Mechanical when no

extensions are loaded
There are some limitations on the Graphic API in Mechanical and DesignModeler when no extensions
are loaded. For instance, the Factory2D does not work. It is therefore advised to have one or more
extensions loaded prior to the usage of the Graphic API.

Starting the ACT Start Page on Linux can cause an unexpected

shutdown
When you start the ACT Start Page on Linux, an unexpected shutdown can occur. On some Linux
operating system variants such as Red Hat, removing the package totem-mozplugin resolves the
issue:

yum remove totem-mozplugin

On Linux, using the ACT API to access ElementNode results always

returns 0
On Linux, when the ACT API is used to access ElementNode results in ANSYS Mechanical, 0 is always
returned.

2
 ANSYS ACT 19.0 Known Issues and Limitations

Limitation on localization support

Localization of ACT is limited to the languages currently supported in ANSYS Workbench. This limitation
does not apply to the ability to manage various languages within the extension. For example, the
property names created by an extension do not have to be in the same language as the current
activated language in ANSYS Workbench.

There is no mechanism to integrate localization for the property names defined by an extension. To
manage different languages for your property names, you must develop localization yourself. Both
regional settings based on the "." or the "," decimal symbol are available. However, the implementation
of the extension should use the "." symbol for any value defined at the XML or IronPython level.

Automation API UI thread and performance

When you are using the ACT automation API, automation methods and properties must be called in the
UI thread. Before 18.1, error messages or unexpected shutdowns were the potential results of the call of
the automation API from a callback that was not executed in the UI thread.

As of 18.1, this issue is solved by automatically redirecting every call to the automation API in the UI
thread. While you will no longer experience error messages or unexpected shutdowns, automatic
redirection can potentially decrease performance. Poor performance is most likely to occur when you
repeatedly call the automation API many times, such as when looping through nodes. If you notice a
significant decrease in performance, you can speed up the process by using one of the following
commands to bypass the multiple switches to the UI thread:

 ExtAPI.Application.InvokeUIThread(func, arg) // This executes the

function func with the argument arg in the UI thread.
 ExtAPI.Application.InvokeUIThread(func) // This executes the
function func in the UI thread.

A usage example follows:

def get_all_object_names(name_list):
""" Returns the given list populated with all the names of the
objects in the tree. """
for obj in ExtAPI.DataModel.Tree.AllObjects:
name_list.Add(obj.Name)
return name_list

Important: Due to technical reasons, the namespace of the automation API object has changed.
Therefore, you should not use the method GetType() as a way to verify the nature of the object that
you have. Instead, you must use the property DataModelObjectCategory, which is available on all
objects. It returns an enum value indicating the type of the object. For example, the following command
returns true:

3
 ANSYS ACT 19.0 Known Issues and Limitations

ExtAPI.DataModel.Project.DataModelObjectCategory ==
DataModelObjectCategory.Project