Abaqus CAE - IGES import and Clean Up

[VN1981]

Hello,
We have several sheet metal parts and assemblies in IGES format. I imported one of them in to Abaqus CAE and found it quite difficult to clean up and proceed.

Several questions to experienced users

1. Is there a feature to convert surfaces or faces generated during IGES import in to Solid/Cells in Abaqus? I want to use Midsurface feature and it don't work without a cell.

2. I manually created surface offsets for a few bodies and it is a tedious process. Anyways, is there anyway to make just the offset surfaces visible? I guess one has to manually create a set and replace them, uh?

I will have to learn if I can do some of these IGES Geometry clean up right in the CAD package rather than in Abaqus.

Would appreciate any pointers for the above.

Thx

 

[Mustaine3]

When you want to have a solid in A/CAE, I would recommend not to use .iges as format for the transfer. Usually every CAD system can export step/stp and they are much better for solids.

Cleaning and simplifying the geometry is always recommended to do in the CAD system. There you have the features and a more powerful kernel.
You could also create the midsurface in the CAD system and transfer only them.


To answer your questions:
1. It is possible to convert a closed face geometry to a solid. But usually this only works if the quality is good and the shape is not too complex.
Part-Module: Shape -> Solid -> From Shell
See CAE Manual 11.22.6 Adding a shell-from-solid feature
Check the outcome with Tools -> Query -> Part Attributes/Geometry Diagnostics

2. When you use the midsurface functionality it is possible to automatically hide the underlying solid. But when you use the overall geometry methods to create the surface, you have to use the display group options. But then your solid is still in the part and is still part of the simulation region. You can copy the part and delete the solid region, but then you loose the associativity between solid and surface.

 

[VN1981]

Thaanks for ur response. Will check out some of the features you ahve mentioned. The IGES files were supplied by a vendor. We are arranging for the files to come over in Step format for the future batches but it seems like we are stuck with Iges for the current one.