Meshing Areas within Ansys

[sammybrush]

I normally use Patran/Nastran for FE problems but have to complete this in Ansys.

I have imported a surface model from Solidworks via IGES into Ansys and I am having problems gluing them together. Just wondering if anybody would be able to help me?

From the little knowledge I have of Ansys, I believe that to ensure that the mesh is consistent I need to glue the two areas together. The gluing bit I understand (on basic area's) and to refine the mesh I have read that it is better to force the line to have a set element size or number of elements per line, rather than using the smart sizing function. (Which I feel happy with)

I think the problem that I have is that I am trying to glue an area to two other areas without splitting the first, please see attached file

Is there an easy way of splitting the area’s either in Ansys or in Solidworks to try and speed up the creation of the model, as I may have several design iterations to look at?
Many Thanks

 

[meshparts]

Hello,

Try using aovlap.

If you need a fast model generation, then splitting the area in solidworks is a good way to achieve that. If you are doing this, will will no longer need aovlap, which is very time consuming. Just issue nummrg,kp. This is much much faster.

Regards
Alex

 

[sammybrush]

Thanks for your response Alex,

After looking at the help files, I presume that overlap looks at the two entities that you pick and then join's them similar to gluing but without removing the lines?

However when I try and use the overlap function it comes back with an error message saying "The input areas do not meet the conditions required for the AOVL operation. No new entities were created. The AGLUE operation is a possible alternative" I have tried it both with the lines and the areas.

I think my best bet is controlling the surfaces/areas within Solidworks and then minimum processing (gluing area's) within Ansys.
Just need to learn how to break my surfaces within Solidworks now.


Many Thanks for your response.

 

[sammybrush]

Sorry to take so long but I have managed to sort the problem out.

I have imported the problem as a parasolid, deleted the volume that is created in ansys and then used the left over areas to create a mesh.

Now I need to start refining my mesh to increase the accuracy of my results.

How do I view the areas of an object once I have imported them as parasolid files?

 

[Wecos]

APLOT

 

[meshparts]

Since I don't really think, that you don't know how to plot areas, I suppose your problem is the wire frame geometry.

Just execute: /facet,norm to correct the problem.

Alex

 

[sammybrush]

Mihajupb, Many thanks for your response the /facet,norm solved the problem.

I use Patran on a daily basis but have to complete this job in Ansys.

I only ever use the GUI commands really and never explored the use of command line interface. After the /facet,norm command the GUI PLOT>AREAS displays the area's as expected.

Many Thanks