COMPOSITE ANALYSIS AND
STRUCTURAL SIZING SOFTWARE
STRUCTURAL SIZING SOFTWARE
Another new key feature developed for HyperSizer is called HyperFinder™. HyperFinder represents an innovative new paradigm for creating, managing and locating files related to HyperSizer. HyperFinder does not replace the PDF based user documentation available from the HyperSizer Help menu, but it is intended to greatly enhance this capability by making it easy for users to find documentation on HyperSizer’s methods and equations, verification examples, test data, and other reference documentation.
There are two methods of accessing HyperFinder from within the HyperSizer GUI. First, it is accessed from the main HyperSizer Help Menu.
Figure 1: HyperFinder accessed from the Help Menu
When HyperFinder is raised in this way, the “Keyword Search” field (A) will be blank, and by default, all document types will be searched. HyperFinder will search for common file types such as Microsoft Powerpoint, Word, Excel or Adobe PDF documents, but it will also search for documents that are specifically related to HyperSizer. HyperFinder allows the user to filter by document type. In the example shown in Figure 1, the keyword “Buckling” has been entered and the filter has been used to show all files with HyperSizer file types (B), but no other file types(C).
To make it easy to search for HyperSizer specific data, four new document types are provided and identified by file extension. These new file types are are:
The second method for accessing HyperFinder is from the HyperSizer Failure tab. This is where the true power of HyperFinder begins to show. When experienced HyperSizer users click on individual failure methods from the Failure tab of the Sizing form, they will notice several new options for each failure method. Selecting any of the four options for “Methods and Equations…”, “Verification Examples…”, “Test Data Summary…” or “All Technical References…” will cause the HyperFinder form to appear.
The HyperFinder form will automatically filter documents based on document type. For example, as shown in Figures 2 and 3, “Methods and Equations…” was selected for the Honeycomb Wrinkling failure method and the HyperFinder form appeared as shown in Figure 3. By selecting the “Test Data Summary” checkbox (A), an HTD test data document was added to the filter, and appeared in the file list.
Figure 3: HyperFinder Entries for Honeycomb Facesheet Wrinkling
Right clicking on one of the documents in the file list (B) will raise a pop-up menu that will allow the user to open the file, open the folder containing the file, or view the properties of the file.
Once in the HyperFinder form, the user changes the failure mode of interest by clicking the “Restrict Search…” button (C). This will cause another dialog to appear where any of the HyperSizer analysis methods can be selected. After dismissing this dialog, HyperFinder will display documents related to this newly selected document.
Figure 4: Selecting HyperSizer Failure Methods for Display in HyperFinder
The documents that are managed and displayed with HyperFinder are to be distributed with the HyperSizer installation onto a user’s computer into a specific file folder structure. Alternatively, these documents could be installed to a central location that is accessible to multiple users over a network. While HyperFinder makes the job of finding HyperSizer methods related documentation very easy, a great deal of care went into the hierarchical directory structure design, which makes navigation easy and intuitive. The layout of the tree structure is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 5: Tree Structure of HyperSizer Methods Documentation
The overall methods are broken down into those that deal with failure, loading, optimization, stiffness formulation, etc. Then under the category of Failure for example, each analysis method is broken down from general to specific categories.
For example, as shown in Figure 5, there are two specific methods for sandwich facesheet wrinkling, these are analysis ID 90 and 91, the first of which is for either isotropic or honeycomb cores, and the second of which is specific to honeycomb cores. There is a folder for each of these specific failure methods (A). Documentation for facesheet wrinkling in general (i.e. not related to a specific method) would go in the “Wrinkling” folder (B). Documentation related to all sandwich failure methods would go in the “Sandwich” folder (C), and so on.
When HyperFinder searches for documentation for a particular failure method, it will begin in the specific folder for that particular method and if no documentation is found for that method in particular, it will continue up the tree from specific to general until a document is found that will be listed in the HyperFinder file list.