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Ansys Composite PrepPost (ACP) for developers

Overview

Ansys Composite PrepPost (ACP) is the Ansys preprocessor for layered composite structures, allowing you to define and visualize complex layups. Besides the ability to model thin structures as shells, ACP also provides advanced solid modeling capabilities, such as extruding shell models to solid models and mapping layup information onto existing solid meshes. Because ACP uses a ply-based approach, the layup definition is independent of small geometry and mesh changes. ACP interfaces with many third-party applications by means of the Composite CAE H5 interface. 

The ACP kernel is fully scriptable from its ACP scripting interface. With this scripting interface, you can build complete ACP models from scratch, facilitating the creation of comprehensive ACP models directly from external data sources. Parameter studies are another use case for scripting. In this case, only certain parameters in the model need to be adjusted. You can also use scripting to build complex layups that would be cumbersome to build in the GUI. In addition to Python scripting, ACP supports importing modeling entities from comma-separated files, allowing you to build complex models with ease. 

OS and supported languages

ACP scripting interface and library are available for Windows and Linux in:

  • Python

Documentation

ACP scripting interface

Use the ACP scripting interface to build and customize the functionality of complex composite models.

2024 R2

Previous

PyDPF Composites (open source)

Build your Python module based on DPF to perform composite-specific postprocessing by using failure criteria or user-defined routines. This  module is applicable for short-fiber, layered, and homogeneous structures.

View docs

Related projects

When using the ACP scripting interface, you can perform further development with the APIs and libraries of these Ansys products: