Reading your first result

When the solve finishes, the Simulation tab shows contour plots of stress and displacement and a Safety card. Three numbers on that card tell you most of what you need to know:

• Max FI — the highest failure index anywhere in the loaded part. Below 1 the part is within its failure limit; NoviPath flags Near limit when Max FI exceeds 0.8 and Exceeds limit when it passes 1.0.
• Safety factor — the inverse of Max FI (SF = 1 / Max FI). A Max FI of 0.5 means a safety factor of 2.
• Failure load — each applied load divided by Max FI: the load at which the part is predicted to reach its failure limit, assuming the response stays linear.

Use the deformation Scale slider to make the deformation mode visible, but remember that the warped shape is a visualization only: the numbers come from the color bar and the Value Range, and raising the scale does not change the solution or mean that the part has yielded.

Two quick sanity checks: the deformation should look plausible (bending where you expect bending), and the displacements should not be zero. If every result is zero — the part shows as all blue — the model is almost certainly over-constrained; see Why are my simulation results all zero (all blue)?.

Learn more: Failure index and safety factor · Failure load · The deformation scale slider · Why are my simulation results all zero (all blue)?