nTopology 3.16 is here! This release features a new “Name” property for Part and CAD Bodies imported from your native CAD program, allowing you to identify which part chips you need since they have the same CAD names. The Mesh from Implicit Body by Voxels block is in full production as a version of the Mesh from Implicit Body block. It creates an even better conversion experience, guaranteeing manifold meshes if the sharpen option is unchecked. Lastly, visit the User Dashboard to go through an enhanced onboarding experience to get the most out of your first few sessions in nTopology. As with every release, nTopology’s dedicated support team is ready to answer your questions. Please visit support.ntopology.com to access helpful tutorials and support articles.

• Name Property for Part and CAD Body

• Enhanced User Onboarding Flow

• Usage Improvements

• Block Updates

• Bug Fixes

Name Property for Part and CAD Body

• We’ve added a “Name” property to the Part and CAD Body variable types.
• The Properties tab of the Import Part block shows the names of imported parts and bodies as defined in CAD so you can quickly identify the bodies you need.
• Part names are generated from its filename, and CAD Body names are generated from the CAD data. These names are loaded as text variables and aren’t editable.

Enhanced User Onboarding Flow

nTopology now provides a more targeted onboarding and activation flow through our User Dashboard designed to enable first-time users to learn about the product with greater context, learning materials, and steps to take during a trial or first use. Learn about the product’s core value proposition and capabilities with onboarding videos, how-to guides, and training sessions for the specific nTop applications that interest you.

Tips:

• Leverage Activation Tasks targeted at the stage you’re in (Preview or Trial).
• Review content personalized to you based on your application interests.
• Partake in courses designed to ramp up your understanding of nTop workflows.
• The Get Started page hosts a repository of all onboarding material, activation tasks, and content for later review.

Usage Improvements

• The documentation now features a “Getting Started” section. It includes information on System Requirements, Licensing, Upgrading, the Login Screen, and the Support System.

Block Updates

• Mesh from Implicit Body by Voxels moved out of beta and into production as version 2.0.0 of Mesh from Implicit Body. Mesh from Implicit Body version 2.0.0 uses a robust meshing algorithm that can handle more complex geometry and results in cleaner meshes than version 1.0.0. When the sharpen option is unchecked, the mesh is guaranteed to be manifold and have no self-intersecting elements. The block overload exposes more options, including increasing the number of iterations to produce a sharper result and a region to localize sharpening to a specific area. Mesh from Implicit Body version 1.0.0 is still available for you to use, but we won’t be doing new development work or bug fixes for version 1.0.0.
• We changed the behavior of the block version drop-down to show all available block versions. Previously the drop-down on blocks such as the Volume Mesh block did not display all available versions, and users had to search for the deprecated version using the search bar. Similar to the behavior for block overloads, if there are a different number of inputs and one or more inputs contain a value, you will not be able to switch to a different version. Delete the input’s value to enable switching:

Version 1.0.0 is displayed but grayed out. Delete the value for Growth rate to be able to change versions.

• We changed the finite element beam formulation from Kirchhoff to Isoparametric Mindlin, so results are more consistent with other commercial FEA codes. As such, we have versioned the Modal Analysis block to 1.2.0 and depreciated version 1.1.0.
• We added a drop-down for unit cell orientation to all of the beta unit cell blocks. This allows you to easily change the orientation during unit cell creation, without the need for a separate orient block.

Bug Fixes

• Exporting anisotropic material properties to Ansys is not supported. The Export FE Model and Export Material blocks would complete successfully before this release, but they wouldn’t write the anisotropic material properties to the *.cdb file. Now a warning message will be issued from the Export FE Model block when exporting a model that contains an anisotropic material to Ansys. In contrast, an error is be issued from the Export Material block. Consequently, the Export Material block is now version 1.1.0, and version 1.0.0 is deprecated.
• We fixed an issue that caused a hard crash when switching the Unit System.
• We fixed an issue that caused nTopology to crash during a modal analysis after changing the Geometric order of the FE Volume Mesh from Linear to Quadratic.
• An error in the Pressure boundary condition was corrected when providing a Field input. The Pressure block is now version 1.1.0, and version 1.0.0 is deprecated.
• We fixed an issue in the Custom Implicit Unit Cell block that caused the unit cells to have discontinuous fields. This affected downstream operations such as booleans and offsets. Unit cell fields are now smooth and continuous.

View of the field before the bug fix:

Field view after the bug fix: