[ GiDlist ] Contact surface creation in GiD

[ASSANELLI Andrea CINI]

Hi, I am using GiD (v5.0 p47) as a pre-processor for an in-house FE program.
I am modelling a 2D problem in which 2 bodies are expected to get in contact
during the analysis, but are intially separated or with interference
(overlapping). The two bodies are defined as planar surfaces bounded by
lines, polylines and arcs.

I can create correctly the surfaces and its meshes. However, when I want to
create contact surfaces (using Geometry-Create-Contact-Surface) the
contact surfaces are not created: after selecting a series of lines I obtain
the message "Created 0 new contact surfaces. Can continue (ESC to leave)".
What I really need is the list of nodes for the lines that I will define as
my contact surfaces, ordered by pairs (target-contactor). I will have
tipically 25/30 contact pairs (target-contactor) per analysis, and I would
prefer to generate this information automatically, and not going to the
specfied surfaces AFTER the meshing and listing the nodes. Is this possible?

Thank you very much,

Andrea Assanelli
Senior Research Engineer
CINI/FUDETEC
Buenos Aires
ARGENTINA