Sometimes, when running a large solution on a remote server (such as a Linux cluster), the ANSYS results file can become very large, and it may be tedious to retrieve the entire .rst file.

The RESWRITE command was actually introduced in ANSYS 11.0 to allow users to combine separate results file from multiple CMS superelements. However, this command can also be used to create a separate result file for a single load step of interest through the following steps:

  1. RESUME the database after solution
  2. Enter the General Postprocessor /POST1 and load into memory the result set of interest via the SET command
  3. Use RESWRITE,newresult to write loaded results to a separate file “newresult.rst”

Of course, “newresult” can be any name the user wishes to use. Additional results may be appended to this newly-created (copied) result file through the use of additional RESWRITE commands.

If one may be solving very large models on a remote machine while performing pre- and post-processing operations on a more limited Windows client (such as a laptop computer), one may wish to deal with multiple, smaller result files rather than a single, large result file. The RESWRITE command effectively allows one to ‘split’ a result set to a separate file.

(Note that ANSYS load case combinations can also perform the same tasks. The LCWRITE command writes result data to a .lXX file, where XX is an integer number. For nonlinear data, one must use LCSUM,ALL prior to LCWRITE to ensure that non-summable data is also written. Afterwards, one can use LCFILE to point to the load case file and use LCASE to read results in memory. However, the author tends to find the RESWRITE method easier, more straightforward to implement, and generally more flexible than the use of load case files.)