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Best way to Extract a Surface
2

Best way to Extract a Surface

Best way to Extract a Surface

(OP)
I am planning to do some Finite element analysis of a complex structure for which i need to extract the inside (or mid) surface of the part. I have this part in solidworks and want to know which is the better method to extract the inside/outside surface.

I tried the following. Selected one of the inside areas and the right clicked to select tangency, that selected all of the inside areas (around 220 roughly). Then in the save as IGES (or parasolid binary x_t) i chose save selected surfaces only. This gave me the surface i needed in IGS or x_t format.

Problems:  When i import this surface(igs) to one of the finite element software i am getting some gaps between the areas that are difficult to fill. Also some warnings saying unable to create a few trimmed areas etc.


I just want to know whether i am doing anything wrong in extracting the surace this way?

If so is the any othe method to extract these surfaces?
Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks,
NodalDOF.


RE: Best way to Extract a Surface

Sounds like your problem might lie in the import/export process for the IGES file (common).

Do you need to export into IGES particularly or can you use another format.  Parasolid will tend to behave much better, typically, although I've not done a lot of exporting of mere surfaces in parasolid.

What do you use for the analysis?

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe trumps reason.

RE: Best way to Extract a Surface

Try using the offset surface feature with a vlaue of 0. The delete the leftover solid body of the part...and export that.

Jason

UG NX2.02.2 on Win2000 SP3
SolidWorks 2006 SP4.0 on WinXP SP2

RE: Best way to Extract a Surface

OK, just noticed in your post that you can handle parasolid (x_t).  That's great.  Follow Jason's advice above and you should do well.  Just make sure you don't miss any of the small surfaces before exporting.  If you use the Delete Body feature, the feature will be in your feature manager tree--so you can roll back to reselect additional faces in case you missed any--before exporting.

Should work well.

Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
Reason trumps all.  And awe trumps reason.

RE: Best way to Extract a Surface

(OP)
Jeff/Jason,

Thank you very much. The method you sugggested seems to have improved the quality of my imported surface alot. BTW i am analyzing this in ANSYS.

Surface imported as IGS still have some problems ( Its changing a few curved areas to rectangular areas). However, parasolid format(x_t) worked well with a very few warnings.

I will post here if i see problems after the analysis.

thanks,
NodalDOF.

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