When writing papers and reports, sometimes the display requirements for contour plots are quite high. A visually appealing and well-structured contour plot can save you a lot of explanatory effort. This article briefly introduces the common contour plot legend settings in the ANSYS Workbench interface.
1. Legend Font Size
The legend font size cannot be set directly. It can only be changed by modifying the Mechanical global font size. The setting method is as follows:
Click File – Options – UI Options, select Font. There are three levels available—just choose the appropriate one.
2. Number of Color Bands
The number of color bands cannot be set by manually entering a quantity. Users simply click on the color bar, and plus or minus signs will appear nearby. Use these signs to increase or decrease the number of bands, as shown below.
3. Changing a Specific Color in the Color Bar
If you want to highlight a specific range of colors, the system default colors may not be obvious enough. In this case, you can customize colors. Click on a range of the color bar, right-click, and select Custom Color. To restore system settings, select Automatic Color.
4. Switching Between Floating Point and Scientific Notation
When using floating point display, numbers may not align properly, affecting the appearance. In this case, you can switch to scientific notation display. Right-click near the legend and select All Scientific Notation.
5. Changing the Number of Significant Digits
If you want to increase the number of decimal places displayed in floating point format, click Digits and select the specific number of digits. Currently, 2 to 8 decimal significant digits are supported.
6. Manually Changing Legend Values
By default, contour plots automatically arrange and distribute values based on the maximum and minimum values in the current database. If abnormal situations such as stress concentration occur, the features expressed by the contour plot may not be obvious enough. In this case, you can manually specify legend values to circumvent this problem.
Double-click the value near the legend to enter edit mode, then manually input the desired value. To return to system values, right-click near the value and select Automatic Value.
7. End Color Band Settings
Right-click and select Independent Bands to toggle the display of maximum and minimum value color regions. Combined with the custom color and value settings described above, you can achieve contour plot display for specified regions. This is very impressive—as shown below, only the contour plot within the 0.02~0.1 range is displayed, with everything else shown in gray.
8. Legend Style Switching
Right-click and select Color Scheme to switch the contour plot color display style. By default, the Rainbow display style is used. You can select Grayscale to switch to a black-and-white style.
9. Transparent Background Toggle
By default, the legend background is transparent. You can click Semi Transparency to enable the background frame, which is suitable for situations where there are many elements on the plot and you need to highlight the legend.
10. Horizontal Legend Layout and Movement
Right-click and select Horizontal to switch the legend to horizontal layout. Move the mouse near the contour plot information display area, and the cursor will change to a movable state. Then drag the mouse to move the legend.
11. Legend Auto-Adjustment
If you want settings such as the number of colors to auto-adjust based on the current contour plot, click Adjust to Visible.
12. Saving and Loading Legends
Want to directly use your carefully configured legend style next time without repeating the process? Absolutely possible!
After setting the legend, right-click and select Named Legends – New, name your current legend style, then select Manage and choose Export to save the current legend settings as an XML file.
Next time you use it, click Manage, then select Import, choose the XML file to load it. After loading, switch to the corresponding named style.
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