Comparing two Ansys Mechanical Model Trees

Question

I want to compare two Ansys Mechanical Models and summarize the differences. For some cases it is sufficient to just compare the two ds.dat files with e.g. Notepad++. But different meshes make this comparison quickly confusing.

My idea is to export the tree of the two Models from ExtAPI.DataModel.Project.Model to two dictionaries and than compare those. But I have difficulties keeping the structure. When I try to iterate through all Children inspiried by this link with

#recursive function to iterate a nested dictionary       
def iterate(dictionary, indent=4):
    print '{'
    for child in dictionary.Children:
        #recurse if the value is a dictionary
        if len(child.Children) != 0:
            print ' '*indent + child.Name + ": " ,
            iterate(child, indent+4)
        else:
            print ' '*indent+ child.Name
            
    print ' '*(indent-4)+ '}'

I get the structure in a usable format:

iterate(Model) 
{
    Geometry:  {
        Part:  {
            Body1
        }
    ...
    }

    Materials:  {
        Structural Steel
    }
    Cross Sections:  {
        Extracted Profile1
    }
    Coordinate Systems:  {
        Global Coordinate System
    } ... }

But now I am strugling with replacing the print statement in the recursive function and keeping the structure from the model tree.

Would you please share the input file to be able to reproduce your results, thank you — baskettaz, Jan 12 '22 at 21:37
If you execute the code sample in the ACT shell you will get comparable result. — meshWorker, Jan 13 '22 at 06:05

Bharel · Accepted Answer · 2022-01-17T15:39:28.830

Move it into a dictionary comprehension:

def iterate(dictionary):
    return {
        child.Name: (iterate(child) if child.Children else None)
        for child in dictionary.Children
    }

The output will be:

{
    "Geometry":  {
        "Part":  {
            "Body1": None
        },
    ...
    },

    "Materials":  {
        "Structural Steel": None,
    }
    "Cross Sections":  {
        "Extracted Profile1": None,
    }
    "Coordinate Systems":  {
        "Global Coordinate System": None
    } ... }

You can use pprint.pprint() if you wish to format it nicely for presentation.

Comparing two Ansys Mechanical Model Trees

1 Answers1