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Creating Complex Objects Created from Multiple Finite Elements with Different Material Properties

Modalys
#1

Hello Everyone,

Hope you are doing well.

I want to create a pretty complex model which is made of multiple finite elements, so that I can assign different material properties such as density, young, Poisson, etc. to each element object. Is it possible in the current version? If yes, could you please tell me how?

Thank you!

P.S. I am using Modalys 3.8.1

#2

Hi Sasan,
It should be possible, yes. Are you using ModaLisp or the lua API in Max?
Robert

#3

Thanks for the reply Robert!

I am using Lua in MAX.

To make it more clear what I want to do, I want to create a complex anatomical model shape let’s say the model has the shape of a heart or lung that should be made of ~2000 nodes (points) and ~5000 edges, which for instance gets ~2000 finite elements as “quadrilateral” or even more. Now, I want to set the material properties of each finite element according to some data that I get for example from a CT scan or MRI image. I was thinking to create the 2000 elements in their specific positions as separate elements with create_object(kind=“finite-element”,…) and then using “adhere” connection to connect them in a way that I get them as a single object. However, there are problems/questions:

First, it seems to me that creating so many elements separately requires a lot of computational resources and even maybe impossible. Is it the only way of doing this?

Second, If the “adhere” works, how many accesses I need to adhere? One access for each neighbor element?

Third, is there any way to visualize the entire object (including all 2000 elements) as a one single composed object using “modalys.view(elements)”? It would be really helpful by debugging to see how the model has been created and see its vibrations modes.

Fourth, it would also be very very helpful to create the elements not as quadrilateral but as tetrahedron or triangular as these allow me to text the resultant sound, which is more plausible to get a better result due to the complex anatomical structure. I see in the “mlys-lu-init.lua” file that you have reserved the as “NOTTODO” :wink:

Your responses are invaluable and will significantly contribute to the advancement of my research. Thank you for your help.

Best
Sasan