Best Practice: Using the Physics Simulation Adapter in Process Apps

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This is the third post in a series of SIMULIA Community Best Practices featured on the blog. Come back for more posts about SIMULA Best Practices and other interesting simulation content.

Read the first Best Practice blog, here. And the second one, here.


The ‘Physics Simulation’ adapter is an application adapter in the ‘Optimization Process Composer’ application. This adapter allows a user to execute the simulation objects created in the ‘Physics Simulation’ application via a Simulation Process in the ‘Optimization Process Composer’ application. Using this adapter, the user can change the 3DEXPERIENCE parameters that are input to the simulation object, such as dimensions, load, etc., and execute the simulation object. After the execution, the ‘Physics Simulation’ adapter captures the output parameters, field plots, history plots, etc.

The ‘Physics Simulation’ adapter provides options to execute the simulation object in various execution modes such as Single Solve, Iterative Solve (low disk usage), and Iterative Solve (high disk usage). Executing the simulation object with the ‘Single Solve’ mode saves the simulation results in the simulation object. In contrast, executing the simulation object with the ‘Iterative mode’ does not save the simulation results in the simulation object. Lastly, the execution mode ‘Iterative mode (high disk usage)’ provides options to create new branches of the original simulation object for each run. This execution mode is a good choice to perform other operations on the new branches downstream, such as Performance Trade-off analysis, Results Analytics, etc. The ‘Physics Simulation’ adapter also offers options to speed up the execution time, such as selecting the number of cores, and running the job in a persistent session.

This document explains the best practices to configure the ‘Physics Simulation’ adapter with the simulation object using two examples: hook design and bottle top load compression analysis. The document also covers various ways of troubleshooting execution issues based on the type of the execution failure by providing variables that can be defined to capture particular logs to identify the cause of the execution failure.

Target Audience: Simulation Expert, Method Developer

In this Best Practice, you will learn about:

  • Advantages of mode selection for the execution
  • Branching of the Simulation Object and its Lifecycle
  • Best practices for configuring the adapter
  • Best practices to troubleshoot the adapter related issues

Looking for more Best Practices? Get them HERE.

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Katie Corey

Katie is the Editor of the SIMULIA blog and also manages SIMULIA's social media and is an online communities and SEO expert. As a writer and technical communicator, she is interested in and passionate about creating an impactful user experience. Katie has a BA in English and Writing from the University of Rhode Island and a MS in Technical Communication from Northeastern University. She is also a proud SIMULIA advocate, passionate about democratizing simulation for all audiences. Katie is a native Rhode Islander and loves telling others about all it has to offer. As a self-proclaimed nerd, she enjoys a variety of hobbies including history, astronomy, science/technology, science fiction, geocaching, true crime, fashion and anything associated with nature and the outdoors. She is also mom to a 2-year old budding engineer and two crazy rescue pups.