I.1.1 Methods for FEM definition

No generic “DataBase” object can be created because “DataBase” class cannot be instantiated. This means that a statement like:

leads to an error message. All the methods described in this section are defined in the specialized versions of the DataBase class. So no “new”, “initialize” or “clone” method is defined in DataBase class.

One defines three methods that allow to retrieve the number of entities of certain types stored in DataBase FE model:

• “NbrCoordSys” attribute returns the number of coordinate systems stored in the DataBase.
• “NbrElements” attribute returns the number of elements stored in the DataBase.
• “NbrNodes” attribute returns the number of nodes stored in the DataBase.

Each of these methods has no argument and returns an integer. Other methods allow to check the existence of finite element entities:

• “checkCoordSysExists” returns true if the specified coordinate system exists, false otherwise.
• “checkElementExists” returns true if the specified element exists, false otherwise.
• “checkNodeExists” returns true if the specified node exists, false otherwise.
• “checkRbeExists” returns true if the specified RBE exists, false otherwise.

Each of these four methods has one integer argument corresponding to the entity the existence of which is checked.

Several methods allow to retrieve elements information. Each of the following methods has one integer argument corresponding to the element ID:

• “getElementType” returns an integer corresponding to the type ID of the element.
• “getElementTypeName” returns a string corresponding to the type name of the element.
• “getElementDim” returns an integer corresponding to the topological dimension of the element.
• “getElementNbrNodes” returns an integer corresponding to the number of nodes defining the element.
• “getElementNbrCornerNodes” returns an integer corresponding to the number of corner nodes defining the element.
• “getElementNodes” returns an array of integers that corresponds to the element nodes.
• “getElementCornerNodes” returns an array of integers that corresponds to the element corner nodes.

Normally one class corresponds to each solver supported by FeResPost. The preferences for the different supported solvers are described in Part III.