Concrete Building with FE concrete walls

[ichandrinos106880]

Dear sirs,
I am analyzing a concrete multy-story building with concrete walls and slabs. Running analysis I am getting the message "533-distorted element!".
At the beginning I thought that it was messing problem, but even with the automatic messhing by program nothing worked.
Do you have an idea?

[jpo82]

I have also done a couple multy-story concrete buildings with Robot and I it sure can be tricky. Error message "in coherent mesh" was a familiar sight. For me most of these error were caused by minor mistakes in geometry, on panel connections there were 0,01 mm gaps etc. This caused dense or otherwise stange looking mesh for panel connections.

So if you want to do multi-storey building of panels
-make sure your geometry is absolutely right. Be careful when using dwg references, they cause easily minor geometry mistakes.
-simplify geometry if you can
-don't use automatic meshing. In my experience you get best result by using manual meshing. First mesh all wall panels and then floors.

Last time I had to model entire building I was using Robot 2010 or 2011 so latest versions may have some improvements on this area.

[pawel.pulak]

The "533-distorted element!" message can also result from minor mistakes of geometry mentioned by jpo82.
It is reported when some finite element has incorrect geometry like collinear nodes. The number in the massage is the number of finite element.
See the video showing it on some deliberately damaged model together with some method to find such finite element:
http://screencast.com/t/OMCsqwHzxF

Finding such element may be useful to identify the inaccuracy of the model causing such effect.