Static structure simple simulation returning errors?

all components are missing in that zipped folder; pack&go

Hello Evan,

There are several reasons why you might be having dificulties with such a simple study and model. I'm listing out some recomendations you could take to model and simulate this far easier. In case you already want to scroll downt to the end because of this post length, here you've got a Too Long, Wont Read for your peace of mind:

- Take a look into using SolidWorks Weldments, it then becomes a lot easier to model and simulate this kind of strucutres. HIT YOUTUBE!!!

- Not using weldments screws SolidWorks Simulation ability to formulate the correct set-up for this kind of problems. So you gotta make it manually if you keep using this 3D Model, or even modeling method in the future.

- Since SW-Sim is not formulating the correct set-up, this isn't only harder to make the simulation work properly, it also becomes hihgly innacurate without a HUGE bump in computational time & effort.

1- Take a look at solidworks Weldments. From the start, the way you modeled this structure isn't optimal in both terms of time spent doing the actual 3D model and simulation analysis prep time aswel. With weldments you could easily make the entire model from the ground up in less than 3 minutes with virtually no prep neded for the simulation, and all knwoledge required could be mastered in 1 hour of study.

2- Your model is considering your beams as solids, so it meshes them 'accordingly' but that definition in itself its wrong. Since you didn't model it with weldments, SW Simulation it's having a hard time automatically recognizing this elements as beams and applying the appropiate mesh to them. But thankfully, since they do comply with requirements for beam meshing (longitud/area > 20) you can change this option manually, as I did in this picture.

Using a solid mesh wouldn't be an option, it doesn't matter the kind of mesh you use (standard, curvatured based or blended), it would take an ENORMOUS amount of computational effort & time to achieve some decently accurate results with this. So I wouldn't recommend Siavash's solution to your problem.

3- Because of the way you model it, the model appears to be unstable and not recognizing that all of these bodies all welded together. Basically because your upper plane beams don't mitter together normally (and again, not trying to sound like a broken record, but they aren't modeled as weldments). A solution to fix this up is to use this settings on your joint group (which will automatically appear after treat all members as beams). Take a look at the next two picture to guide you through this steps.

Input this options and hit calculate.

4- I would re-do the fixture to use nodal fixtures AT THE JOINT instead of face fixtures. Just in case.

From step 2 through 4, you can do it with your current model, and it would basically be the same process with weldments modeling but SW would recognize everything from the get-go and it becomes so much easier. Let me know if you keep runing into problems after following the steps that I provide, but I then ran the simulation and got no problems at all. Posting a picture down bellow for reference.

Let me know what you do regarding this project, I'll keep checking this post.

Regards,

GF