There were several APDL enhancements at 11.0 worth pointing out in case you missed them:

  • *DIM is no longer required to define a result array size when using vector commands (e.g., *VOPER, *VFUN)  (This is one I personally sometimes forget since old habits are hard to break.)
  • A new option to get the list of selected IDs is available with *VGET (e.g., *VGET,,NODE,,NLIST)
  • Instead of using /SYS, one can now use /MKDIR and /RMDIR to create and remote directories

For additional details, see the ANSYS 11.0 Release Notes.

Note that if macros are created that may be run in previous versions of ANSYS, it may be best not to take advantage of new APDL features.  However, if you don’t need backwards compatibility with input files or macros, these new enhancements reduce the number of APDL commands you need, resulting in a slightly more compact, readable input.