Nastran mesh generation free software / .nas specs 1

[laserablaatio]

Hi All,
I'm analyzing structural problems with comsol multiphysics, which for my purposes does not have adequate mesh generation capabilities.

I noticed that I can import an externally created mesh in the NASTRAN (.nas) file format.
My questions are:
1) Do you know of some free (open source) mesh generation tool which can save the mesh in the .nas format (or a programming library for generation of a .nas file)?
2) A .nas file seems to be human-readable. Could someone give a link to the file specification? Maybe I could directly programmatically write .nas files for my models.

Thanks for help!

 

[laserablaatio]

Already found one open-source meshing package with nastran export capability:

http://www.geuz.org/gmsh/

 

[laserablaatio]

... but the above tool cannot create (at least easily) hexahedral meshes. I'd like to have this capability.

 

[GregLocock]

Nastran certainly is human readable, the card structure hasn't changed much since it was, well, cards!

Here's the node/face ordering








Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.