multi body

[wsteffe]

multi body

I am developing an Electromagnetic Simulator which works on a meshed CAD geometry. At the moment the mesh is generated by means of an academic code but this approach is not adequate for a professional usage. Therefore I am looking around to find a better solution based on a commercial CAD/mesher. The Alibre CAD is very cost effective but in my application I need a particular data structure and I would like to know if Alibre (and eventually some other Add on) is well suited to generate it.

The data structure I am speaking of is essentially a solid that is splitted in several subvolumes (which are typically bigger and more complex than finite elements). Each volume is described by its meshed boundary (a triangular mesh with the additional info of the normal vectors associated with all the mesh points). Every contact surface must generate an unique mesh that is shared by the adjiacient volumes and the global mesh must be "watertight". Furthermore I would like that the whole process (definition of the CAD geometry, subvolumes partinioning, meshing) can be parametrized so that a change of a given dimension is automatically propagated into the mesh.

I would be happy to hear any suggestion/opinion that could help in my project.

Thanks
walter

 

[shubhab]

Hi Walter,

The current scope of our API is to query the data model created by the client application and also provide API to create the same data programatically.

With Alibre's API , it is possible to query for the meshes in a part by using the method getFacetsByConfigurationID on IADPartSession, which will return the facet data for the specified Configuration.
Also, any changes made to the part will automatically be propagated to the mesh, which can be verified by querying for facet data again.
However, currently our API doesn't provide the capability of supporting the additional info of the normal vectors associated with all the mesh points and splitting a solid into several subvolumes.

I hope this answers your question.

Thanks,
Shubha
Alibre, Inc.

 

[wsteffe]

Hi shubhab, thanks for your replay

I am sorry for my late replay but I was away for a few days and I was not able to read the forum.

Concerning the subvolumes I would like to clarify that the splitting has not to be done automatically like in the finite element method. It would be sufficient if t is possible to cut a volume with a given plane or to perform other similar operations.
The point here is that these operations have to generate a "non manifold" topology which is characterized by the presence of touching volumes that share a common surface. I have read that solidworks is able to deal with this kind of object (which in sw is named as multibody). As far as I know also the ACIS kernel supports the "non manifold" topology and I was wondering if Alibre (which is based on ACIS) has the same capability.

The support for multibodies is not the only requisite of my application. In fact I would like to generate a surface mesh and to query about the surface normal at each mesh point (the latter operation being not yet possible with the Alibre API). Nevertheless I think that the multibody capability is the most important requisite and I am curious to know something about it.

walter

 

[shubhab]

Hi Walter,

I discussed this issue with our Development team.
You are correct. The ability to generate a "non manifold" topology(Multibody) are accessible from ACIS, however we have not exposed them in Alibre Design. Within Alibre Design it will not be possible to create the type of solid requested.

However, it is possible to imitate such a solid as an assembly.
Assembly booleans could be used to construct the pieces of the part. Unfortunately this does not satisfy your need for the divisions of the part to be controlled parametrically. In short, it will be difficult to accomplish this in Alibre Design without a substantial workaround.

Please let me know if you have any further question.

Thanks,
Shubha,
Alibre, Inc.