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How to find the Water Volume in tanks?
4

How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

(OP)
I need to draw square, rectangular and round tanks for holding water. Right now, I do not know what commands to use to find how much water those tanks will hold in US gallons.

The way I go about it is:

Draw a solid shape; round or square
Use the SHELL command
Click on MASS properties

And I get this information:
Mass properties of Part1 ( Part Configuration - Default )
Output  coordinate System: -- default --
Density = 0.04 pounds per cubic inch
Mass = 0.16 pounds
Volume = 4.34 cubic inches


Does anyone know if this is the correct way? I think I'm lost here!

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

Do surface offset of 0 for all the interior surfaces of your tank.  Create planar surfaces to cap off your offset surfaces.  Knit all the surfaces together into a solid.  Use your mass properties tool and select the solid that represents your water volume.  The mass measurement tool will return the volume.

Pete

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

According to the google calculator 4.34 cubic inches = 0.0187878787 US gallons.

mncad

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

You can use the Cavity\Core method to find the Volume of something like that.

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP
www.scottjbaugh.com
FAQ731-376

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

An easier way to get the volume of the container is to take the volume before the shell command and subtract it from the volume after the shell command, which should give you what remains inside.

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

Does the volume that you create actually represent the water volume, or is it water plus a volume of air above it?

Once you have the shape of the tank, you could create a plane at the maximum height of the water. On that plane, draw the cross section of the tank, and then extrude it using "up to body," but in this case you would uncheck the merge option. You will end up with a separate body equal to the amount of water, and then you can use the measure commands to get the volume. This works good if you have any rounded corners in the tank.

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

When I wanted to calculate the volume of my pond I just modeled the water and added walls afterwards.
Crashj "don't raise the bridge, lower the water" winky smile

--
Hardie "Crashj" Johnson
SW 2005 SP 4.0 (reluctant to change)
Matrox Millenium G550
AMD Athalon 1.8 GHz 512 Meg RAM

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

There is a switch in the Shell function called "Shell Outward" which allows you to model the liquid inside the container, then make the container by adding material to the outside instead of removing it from the inside.  That's like what SnowCrash is talking about.

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

(OP)
Thanks all great help.. Love this forum!!!

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

You guys are not thinking out of the box. if you know the internal specs of the container, just model the water alone.

Yanceman

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

2
Fast way to model internal volume:

  1. Start with model of tank (imported, inserted, copied, whatever)
  2. Use Insert --> Face --> Delete to delete faces that do not make interior volume.  (Note: sometimes you can delete a ring of faces, then just delete the extraneous surface body w/ Delete body).
  3. Create surface(s) to close interior surfaces.  Trim and knit as needed.  Thicken can be used to turn an enclosed surface into a solid.
  4. Get properties of resulting solid
It sounds like a lot of work at first, but it's simple once you get the hang of it.  If you keep links to original solid live (i.e. w/ "Insert --> Part") then you have a volume that automatically updates with the tank model.

I have found this to be the best way for me to maintain a "live" model of void volumes.  This method is robust; it withstands many changes and is easy to repair if any errors do occur.

I could be the world's greatest underachiever, if I could just learn to apply myself.
http://www.EsoxRepublic.com-SolidWorks API VB programming help

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

Very similar to my suggestion - would work very well in all situations.

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

pdybeck:

Pretty close, true.  I used to use offset to get the interior surfaces.  I find that creating a surface by removing face(s) from linked solid to be more robust.  This method allows volume to update without error when interior faces are added or removed from parent solid.

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

So now you've successfully measured the volume of a liquid in a container, can you specify the volume required, allow some dimensions of the container to vary and achieve the required volume?

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

Yes.

RE: How to find the Water Volume in tanks?

A star for Tick..

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