Element labels

The thermal solver maps element labels into a contiguous range so that elements are easily accessed and memory requirements are minimized. The remapped labels are referred to as internal labels, the user defined element labels (as reported by Simcenter 3D, for example) are referred to as external element labels.

It is possible to access particular elements in a model by adopting element label conventions (i.e. all external surface elements are labels 1000-1999), but this is not good practice because:

  • Element labels change with model changes, including automatic remeshing.
  • An element can only have one label and can therefore only belong to one label based set.

If you need to select a particular set of elements use a TMG group. For more information, see Groups.

Within a user written subroutine elements are typically accessed using thermal solver internal element numbers. When checking thermal solver function and subroutine arguments, check whether internal or external elements labels are required or returned.

A function and an array are available to map from the internal element label to the external and vice-versa.

ICONV Integer Array, USER1 argument ICONV(k) is the external label of the element with internal label k. Must be used for reporting element labels to user.
KCONV Integer function KCONV(k) is the internal label of the element with external label k. Returns 0 if the element does not exist.

All error messages generated by the user written code must reference external element numbers. The following is a typical error code:

         if (C(j) .lt. CapMin)then
                        write(*,9000)iconv(j)
9000    format(' Capacitance of element', i6, 'is too small')
                end if

The thermal solver maps element labels into a contiguous range so that elements are easily accessed and memory requirements are minimized. The remapped labels are referred to as internal labels, the user defined element labels (as reported by Simcenter 3D, for example) are referred to as external element labels.

It is possible to access particular elements in a model by adopting element label conventions (i.e. all external surface elements are labels 1000-1999), but this is not good practice because:

  • Element labels change with model changes, including automatic re-meshing.
  • An element can only have one label and can therefore only belong to one label based set.

If you need to select a particular set of elements use a tmg group. For more information, refer to the topics in the Groups section in this guide.

Within a user written subroutine elements are typically accessed using thermal solver internal element numbers. When checking thermal solver function and subroutine arguments, check whether internal or external elements labels are required or returned.

A function and an array are available to map from the internal element label to the external and vice-versa.

ICONV Integer Array, USER1 argument ICONV(k) is the external label of the element with internal label k. Must be used for reporting element labels to user.
KCONV Integer function KCONV(k) is the internal label of the element with external label k. Returns 0 if the element does not exist.

All error messages generated by the user written code must reference external element numbers. The following is a typical error code:

         if (C(j) .lt. CapMin)then
                        write(*,9000)iconv(j)
9000    format(' Capacitance of element', i6, 'is too small')
                end if