[HeikkiT]

Hi,

I have a somewhat complicated geometry that I created with SolidWorks. It is built with solid walls (with some thickness) and the interior part of it is "empty". When I try to mesh the geometry with meshing program (M) it naturally meshes the solid walls.

There is the Fill tool in Design Modeler for filling an interior of some geometry and thus creating a new "solid" volume/geometry. With my geometry the problem is that there is a big number of surfaces inside that need to picked for creating an enclosure inside which the filling is then applied. One quite easily makes mistakes (picks wrong surfaces), gets confused with the selections etc and selecting the surfaces/faces needs to tried again from the very beginning.

Next I I tried to group the surfaces with Named Selection tool so that a small number of surface/face groups would contain all the surfaces from inside needed for creating the enclosure. The problem with this is that the Fill tool does not accept the selected Named Selections in its Faces field.

Any ideas to overcome this problem? Or any other approaches to create a new geometry to be meshed from the interior part of a geometry with walls?

Thanks a lot!
　

[diamondx]

beside using the "hide body" and "hide face" and the "filter tool for the edge point and face." you can't do something about it, are you planning to mesh in ansys meshing or icem cfd ? how complicated is it ? can you share pictures ?

[HeikkiT]

[double post removed]

[HeikkiT]

Hi and thank you for your reply,

Actually I tried to follow the procedure shown in your youtube video from the other related thread (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb8Tsd9eGe4 ) but failure was the outcome.

The geometry is an exhaust collector box with a diffuser (after turbine which is not included). Maybe it is not as complicated as the ones you've been working with but still complicated enough for me And as I told there are too many surfaces (including chamfers etc.) to not to avoid getting confused with them and picking one or more wrong surfaces. Didn't try the hints you now suggested, gonna try them tomorrow if no other methods available.

I still need to add few more details in the geometry so it will be complicated further. That's especially why I really got interested about the boolean subtraction method you suggest in the video.

Gonna do the meshing in Ansys.

Here are two pictures about the geometry and the DM problem that appeared when trying the same as in your video:

http://imageshack.us/a/img94/5905/emt0.png
http://imageshack.us/a/img829/8503/j3eh.png

Related to the latter picture, the reason why there are so many bodies included in my geometry is probably that while building the geometry in SolidWorks I didn't use the merge option when extruding individual walls and other parts of the model with some thickness. I wonder if this is the source of the problems I now face.

[HeikkiT]

This comment by user Diamonx from another thread was of great help to the problem the of 'non-manifold' bodies when trying boolean subtraction:

"Yes the problem is the surface/solid operation.
Designmodeler cannot perform an operation between solid and surface.
...
Then make that rectangle and perform the Boolean feature."


So the answer is rather simple: subtract just the solid bodies ('Solid') of the tool geometry, not the 'Surface Bodies'.

Thanks to Diamondx.

[diamondx]

glad you figured it out !

[umairjamil]

Dear All,
I am trying to do a DPM modeling for the flow dynamics of particles and air inside a spray dryer using ANSYS Fluent. My confusion might be under rated but I am stuck with it since a week now. The model apparently seems easy and might also be but I am confused about few things. I have attached a picture of the geometry as well as geometry file if someone wants to look into it.
Firstly, I am confused about the negative volume (fluid extraction) inside the spray dryer body. Should I use certain operations like fill or enclosure in order to model the flow dynamics or does assigning the body as Fluid body is enough?
Secondly as there an outlet pipe inside the dryer, I am not very sure how to proceed with this? Should the pipe be as a solid body or a fluid body? And should I use certain Boolean operations for the pipe like subtract or not? For now all the bodies I have kept as frozen.
I would be very grateful if anyone could give an insight to this problem. I merely need an advice or a guidance to what path or necessary steps I should follow that align with my problem. I look forward to helpful responses. Thank you very much.
Kind regards,
Umair Jamil

[diamondx]

Start a new thread, post some picture so it can be clear

[umairjamil]

Originally Posted by diamondx

Start a new thread, post some picture so it can be clear

Hey there,
I have started a new thread. However, i am new here so not really sure how the threads work. i am pasting the url of the new thread i have started with a picture attached of the spray dryer.
http://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/flu...tml#post610396

The main problems i am having is because of the outlet pipe placed inside the spray dryer. Even if i am somehow after doing certain operations like BOOLEAN> subtract pipe from whole body! I have also used the Fill operation by selecting all the inner faces for volume extraction, i am still having issues. After successful meshing, Fluent gives me error that flow boundry is next to solid zone and gives me two interior fluid zones. I have some experience with Ansys but i am just confused how to approach this problem. I would be really grateful if you could give me some hints through your experiences.
Thank you very much,
Regards