Preferences : Miscellaneous

This page handles miscellaneous preferences that do not fit clearly into any other category.

Definition

Messages

It is often useful to be able to limit the number of error and warning messages that are be displayed. Limiting the number of messages is achieved by setting the number of messages. Selecting 'omit lists in notes' reduces the amount of output by giving the details but not a list of entities to which that applies.

Timed Backup Interval

GSA will write a backup file either on demand (a manual backup) or at a timed interval (a timed backup) The timed backup interval set here is used to determine the frequency of the timed backups. Setting the timed backup interval to zero disables the timed backup mechanism. Other options allow tailoring of what is included in the backup .

Startup

The ‘Welcome’ dialog when opening GSA is optional and is controlled by the Show Welcome dialog option. When opening a file initial graphic and output views can be activated.

Batch Output

Batch ‘save to file’ options for Saved Graphic Views and Saved Output Views will be saved in the format specified here.

COM Objects

When using the GSA COM interface it can be beneficial to create a new GSA instance for each COM object.

Solver options

The LS-DYNA environment to launch when setting up an LS-DYNA task can be specified. Also it is possible to set the D3PLOT ****version to be used when exporting from GSA. More recent versions of D3PLOT provide better support for files from GSA, but these features will be regarded as a corrupt database by earlier versions. LS-DYNA plot files store displaced coordinates rather than displacements. For linear static analysis these can be small compared with the coordinates so this option allows the displacements to be autoscaled to provide more accuracy and better visuals in D3PLOT.

LS-DYNA – GSA can be used to create analysis tasks for LS-DYNA, but has no direct link with LS-DYNA. The user can set up a link to the LS-DYNA shell environment to provide a direct connection from GSA.

Advanced – The advanced preferences allow threading to be controlled and diagnostic information to be requested.