Prepare CAD Designs for Simulation
LiveLink™ for PTC® Creo® Parametric™ includes the capability to automatically detect and repair geometric anomalies in a design and to perform defeaturing operations to prepare a CAD model for simulation. Predefined tolerances are used during the import of a CAD model to automatically identify problems and make sure that the imported solids or surfaces are correctly defined. Gap healing is also automatic during import to ensure that a solid is produced for meshing and simulation. Small, often insignificant, details or anomalies in a geometry create areas with very dense meshes making simulations less efficient. After a successful import, you can further defeature the geometry by identifying these fine details based on tolerance settings. You can then remove all, or selected, items that meet the specified criteria. Features that you can remove in this manner include slivers, small faces, or edges, and design elements such as fillets.
Virtual geometry operations in COMSOL Multiphysics provide an additional means to reduce the computational complexity in a simulation caused by dense meshes. A virtual geometry is created by selecting small features in a design that you want ignored by the meshing tools. While you are defeaturing a design you are removing small features, and the geometry algorithm covers the resulting holes by stretching or shrinking the surrounding faces or edges. This operation inevitably modifies the local curvature of the geometry object. By using virtual geometry operations you can preserve the curvature, since the surfaces and edges are not removed or modified, only hidden. The simulation mesh on a virtual geometry reduces the required computational resources and is still based on the original design, even in the slightest detail, for those simulation applications that demand this.
Import and Export of CAD Files
Instead of directly linking or synchronizing with a COMSOL Multiphysics model, CAD files can be imported and exported in a range of formats. Using LiveLink™ for PTC® Creo® Parametric™, you can import 3D CAD files in the Creo Parametric formats (.prt, .asm), as well as in one of the widely used Parasolid®, ACIS®, STEP, and IGES formats. In addition, you can import the native files of the Inventor®, and SOLIDWORKS® CAD systems. The optional File Import for CATIA® V5 provides support for importing the native file format for this system. Imported 3D CAD models are converted to Parasolid geometries that can be further modified in the COMSOL Multiphysics environment. Modifications to a Parasolid geometry in COMSOL Multiphysics can include Boolean geometry operations or the addition of fluid domains to a model that otherwise consists of solid parts. When making changes to imported geometry, or even creating your own additions to illustrate a concept, you can always be sure that you can share your work by exporting modified designs in the Parasolid or ACIS file formats for import into other tools.
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