Simplification Surface and Surface Mesh

Maxime Chagnot

28 Mar, 2019 03:11 PM

https://youtu.be/XQ0Q6M66ToM

This tutorial shows you how to transform a multi-patches surface into a clean surface.

With the surface simplification functionality, you can merge patches together and obtain a proper surface.
Combined with the healing feature, you fill the small gaps and connect all the patches together.
To verify if the surface you can offset it to see if it is fully healed.

The final step is to open the SIMULIA Structural Model Creation application, to mesh the surface and see why is it useful to clean the surface first.

1. Step 1: Video

   
   

2. Step 2: Join the Patches

   * This tutorial works if you have a surfaces containing a lot of patches *

   Open your part in Generative Shape Design application

   Use the feature Join on the patches that have the same curvature

   Continue with other area that contains patches

3. Step 3: Simplification Surface

   Merge the different patches on each Join using the feature simplification surface

   * You should have few patches left 5 or 6 instead of 100 *

4. Step 4: Analysis the data

   in Review Tab launch the Surface Connection Checker panel

   Analyse the data and see how many boundaries your part has

   * in the case of the video -> 8 boundaries instead of 4 *

5. Step 5: Healing and Offset

   We saw that the surfaces contains to many boundaries, it means that there are tiny gaps between the patches. Therefore we need the feature Healing.

   One method that is easy to detect the gaps between parts is to create an offset solid on the patch

   Create offset solid 1 mm one 1 patch

   Join with another Patch

   Edit the offset solid and change by the Join.

   -> If the offset works, continue to join other patches until the end

   -> If the offset does not work, use the feature Healing instead of Join

   * IMPORTANT * The Healing feature will fill the gaps between 2 patches, however it will slightly modify the geometry

   Then redo the offset

   -> If the offset works, continue to join and heal other patches until the end

   -> If the offset does not work, increase the value of the healing tolerance, until the offset works.

   * this might take some time and back and force operation, but at the end your part will be cleaned up *

   -

   To finish, verify that your surface does not contain too many gaps using the surface connection checker.

6. Step 6: Mesh

   Your Surface is now cleaned up and ready to mesh.

   Insert a Finite Element (or Mesh) in your 3DPart (Right click / insert / FE)

   Rename the mesh as you want

   Double click on the Mesh icon

   it will automatically go to SIMULIA Mesh Creation

   Click on Surface Quad Mesh

   Click on Initialize from geometry

   Click on Mesh

   * Your quad mesh is now created on the surface *

7. Step 7: Refine Mesh (optional)

   It is possible to refine your mesh quality by editing this one on local specifications tab.

   * you automatically switch to Surface Rules Mesher App *

   You can modify the boundaries of the mesh by adding constraints on patch edges.

   -> this will improve the orientation of quad element.

   You can also rectify elements manually using the smooth modification

   -

   Go to Check tab of Action Bar

   Run a quick analysis of the mesh quality.

   -> this will give your statistics on your mesh (type of mesh, distortion, etc.)

   
   

   • End of tutorial