• Description

Maximize Productivity with Multiphysics Simulation and 3D CAD Design

LiveLink™ for PTC® Pro/ENGINEER® provides the capability to integrate 3D CAD design with multiphysics simulation to update your workflow and boost productivity. PTC® Pro/ENGINEER® is a versatile CAD solution that enables engineers to create parametric solid models of their product designs. In combination with COMSOL Multiphysics®, you have the ability to create your design in Pro/ENGINEER and then simulate your design in the COMSOL environment.

Creating a COMSOL model geometry from your CAD design is straightforward and allows you to evaluate the performance of your product design in the intended operating environment. Essentially any relevant physical effects and their interactions can be included in a COMSOL model to produce accurate simulations of your design. LiveLink™ forPTC® Pro/ENGINEER® includes features for CAD geometry repair, bidirectional model updates, and direct CAD parameter access from within the COMSOL environment to facilitate the integration of multiphysics simulation into your design process.

Convenient File Handling Options

Importing your 3D CAD file is another way to create a COMSOL model geometry from your design. The file import functionality included with LiveLink™ forPTC® Pro/ENGINEER® is derived from the CAD Import Module and supports the import of the widely used ACIS®, Parasolid®, STEP, and IGES formats in addition to the SOLIDWORKS®, Inventor®, PTC®Pro/ENGINEER®, and PTC® Creo® Parametric™ formats. Optional support for the CATIA® V5 file format is also available. By default, the imported CAD design is represented as a Parasolid geometry in COMSOL Multiphysics that can be further modified or updated. For example, you can combine imported geometry with geometry drawn in the COMSOL environment, and you have several possibilities for partitioning the geometry objects to create additional computational domains. This can be useful if you want to extend the simulation to the regions surrounding the imported solid objects of a CAD design. File export from COMSOL Multiphysics in the ACIS and Parasolid formats allows you to share your geometry and exchange data with other CAD programs and viewers.

Synchronize Design Updates between COMSOL Multiphysics® and PTC® Pro/ENGINEER®

LiveLink™ for PTC® Pro/ENGINEER® provides a bidirectional interface between your designs in Pro/ENGINEER and the corresponding COMSOL model geometry. Direct synchronization ensures that design updates propagate in both COMSOL Multiphysics and Pro/ENGINEER while preserving geometry associations. Geometric entities, such as edges and faces, in the COMSOL model geometry remain associated with the corresponding features in your CAD design so that physics definitions and mesh settings are preserved throughout the revision process. You can manually synchronize the design geometry between Pro/ENGINEER and the COMSOL environment when running both programs concurrently. Synchronization is automatic with parametric sweeps, or when running optimization studies using the optional Optimization Module.

CAD parameters in Pro/ENGINEER, such as the placement or length of a feature, can be directly accessed and modified by COMSOL Multiphysics. Optimization studies and parametric sweeps can be implemented in the COMSOL environment with recurrent access to CAD design parameters. When an optimization goal is achieved by varying the value of a parameter used for simulation, the final optimized value can be written back to the CAD file.

Geometry Repair Process Ensures Efficient Simulations

LiveLink™ for PTC® Pro/ENGINEER® includes tools to prepare your CAD geometry for meshing and analysis. The detection, removal, and repair of geometric anomalies is automatic when you import a design from a CAD file into COMSOL Multiphysics for simulation. Predefined tolerances are used as criteria for the removal and repair process. Small features remaining in a geometry after import can be removed at your discretion to reduce the complexity of the mesh required to simulate your design. The defeaturing tools in this LiveLink™ product can detect features such as small edges, faces, slivers, and fillets that will make your simulations less efficient. Features can be removed from the geometry using the defeaturing tools in COMSOL Multiphysics, or they can be deactivated in Pro/ENGINEER where you have access to the history of the CAD design.

Instead of removing geometric features directly from your design, you can use virtual geometry operations to omit them from your simulations in COMSOL Multiphysics. Virtual geometries are beneficial because they preserve the original surface curvature of your design while reducing the complexity of the mesh for simulation. You create a virtual geometry by selecting features you do not want meshed and included in your simulation. Using this feature enables you to reduce the required computational resources and make your simulations more efficient.

PTC and Pro/ENGINEER are registered trademarks of PTC Inc. or its subsidiaries in the USA and in other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. For a list of such trademark owners, see http://www.comsol.com/tm. COMSOL AB and its subsidiaries and products are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or supported by these trademark owners.