ANSYS Command File Programming Features 

The following ANSYS command listing, shows some of the commonly used 
programming features in the ANSYS command file language known as ADPL 
(ANSYS Parametric Design Language). It illustrates:  

• 

entering parameters (variables)  

• 

prompting the user for parameters  

• 

performing calculations with paramaters; note that the syntax and functions 
are similar to FORTRAN  

• 

control structures  

o 

if - then - else - endif  

o 

looping  

This example file does not do anything really useful in itself besides generate 
keypoints along a line, but it does illustrate some of the "programming features" of 
the ANSYS command language.  

! 
/PREP7                  ! preprocessor phase 
! 
x1 = 5                  ! define some parameters 
x2 = 10 
*ask,ndivs,Enter number of divisions (default 5),5        
! 
! the above command prompts the user for input to be entered into the  
! variable "ndivs"; if only  is entered, a default of "5" is used 
! 
*IF,ndivs,GT,1,THEN     ! if "ndivs" is greater than "1" 
  dx = (x2-x1)/ndivs 
  *DO,i,1,ndivs+1,1     ! do i = 1, ndivs + 1 (in steps of one) 
    x = x1 + dx*(i-1) 
    k,i,x,0,0 
  *ENDDO 
*ELSE 
  k,1,x1,0,0 
  k,2,x2,0,0 
*ENDIF 
! 
/pnum,kp,1              ! turn keypoint numbering on 
kplot                   ! plot keypoints 
klist,all,,,coord       ! list all keypoints with coordinates