FEM CalculiX Cantilever 3D

Introduction
! DO NOT TRANSLATE AT THE MOMENT ! This example is meant to show how an simple Finite Element Analysis done by the FEM_Module looks like. The results could be visualized. Furthermore with the example file it is easy to check if the FEM module is set up properly.



Requirements

 * FCVersion=0.16.6377 or above.
 * This could be checked at the menu Help --> about FreeCAD --> Revisionnumber which has to be bigger than 6377
 * No external software is needed for loading the example file, viewing the mesh and geometry as well as for visualizing the results.

Load Start Workbench

 * 1) Start FreeCAD
 * 2) The Start Workbench should be loaded

Load the example file

 * 1) Go to the example projects and click on "Load an FEM analysis example"
 * 2) If due to further operations some geometry, constraints or the results are broken or deleted just repeat the steps above.



Activate the analysis container

 * 1) To work with an analysis the analysis has to be activated.
 * 2) In tree view right click on the analysis --> activate analysis



Analysis container and its objects

 * 1) Next step will be to give an material to our model

Constraints

 * 1) What needed next is to add some fixed and force constraints to our model.

FEM Mesh

 * 1) The two possibilities by either the build in mesher Netgen and the external mesher GMSH will be shown in this tutorial. There are various

Netgen

 * 1)  Select the shape you wish to mesh, in this case our Cube and click on [[Image:Fem_FemMesh.svg|32px]] Create FEM mesh.

GMSH

 * 1) If FreeCADs build in mesher Netgen is not available the usage of Macro_GMSH is recommended, and is used for this example.

Running the Solver

 * 1) Select the solver object  [[Image:Fem_Solver.svg|32px]] of the analysis in tree view and press  [[Image:Fem_QuickAnalysis.svg|32px]] Quick Analysis from the icon tool bar
 * 2) The analysis will be made and the result object should be created.

Analyzing Results

 * 1) Select [[Image:Fem_Result.svg|32px]] Show result
 * 2) Choose among the different Result types to view the results
 * 3) The slider at the bottom can be used to alter the mesh to view the deformation in a simplified manner
 * 4) To remove the results select [[Image:Fem_PurgeResults.png|32px]] Purge results

We are now finished with the basic workflow for the FEM Module.