[Tobi]

Yes I agree
In my case, I am using STEP files from grabcad which are sometimes really crazy. So I just wanted to state, that the GUI can also handle complex geometries. However, I think doing everything in python is much faster but I cannot do it because I am too lazy to learn Salome + Python in a good way...

[enginpower]

Thanks to all for this helpful discussion.

I'm a beginner, and me too I need a solution for a similar problem. Sorry to need a more deep help, but maybe it will be useful for all beginners.

The procedure you explained is the following (I'm quoting one of you):

• Generate the cad geometry: I exported the geometry from the CAD, all ok
• Explode them to faces, group them if needed: I import the STL file in Salome. Then I explode it in faces, and I group them as I need (inlet, wall, surface2refine, etc...). Right? Is necessary to explode, or could I create the group anyway?
• Mesh each face/group with same mesh size: I move to Mesh section of Salome, then I create a mesh. Which algorithm? I should mesh only the surfaces? How? Only 2D meshes?Just default mesh settings? Please, could you provide more clear information?
• export each face/group individually in STL format: Will each mesh be exported separately? Or what?
• Then modify each exported stl file (solid -> solid outlet, endsolid -> endsolid outlet) and combine them into one single file: is there an order to follow? which part is the up-part? No mind?
• perform surfaceCheck to check whether the combined stl file is closed: how to use this command?

Sorry if most of them are stupid questions, but it will help me a lot (I'm very newbie).



Thanks

[sisetrun]

Hey Valentine,

to your second point:
try to export the geomerty as .step from you CAD.
Then, load the .step in salome Geometry! Make you patches with New Entity - Group - Crate Groupe!
After that, you switch to Salome Mesh by clicking on the icon. Here, you can mesh your groups. Select the geometry. Mesh type is Triangular. Then, select your 2D (Triangle Mefsto) and 1D (Wire). The 1D should be the same for contacting groups. This is important waterproof stl. You can play around with the discretisation hypothesis go get the proper result.
After you "stl-meshing" you can export the parts of your geometry as stl and continue with the steps you already have mentioned.

Hope this works for you...

Best regards

Sebastian

[enginpower]

good explanation for that

Thanks

Is it possible that dividing a solid in stl patches like inlet, wall and outlet become huger when meshed?
What I mean is that: I meshed a solid as stl file and I succeeded, then I divided it following your procedure in three parts, that are inlet, wall, and outlet stl files, but when I meshed with the same snappyHexMesh conditions it overcomes the need of RAM.
I divided it to set the buondary conditions later in the simulation step.

Is it possible?

[Vignesh2508]

Hi Tobi,

Your post was interesting. I was trying to mesh a car stl file and the mesh I got after doing sHM seems quite bad. But i did not know if it is because of the reason you mentioned in your post. Could you take a look at the pictures i attached and give me a reply.


Thanks

Vicky

[Tobi]

Hey Vikki,

how would you like to have a good mesh if your resolution is not good? However, you mean the small misfits of snapping? I think you can handle that with different settings, change and analyze the feature edges etc.

If someone is interested, check out this. I think there is no need for further discussions then

https://www.cfd-online.com/Forums/op...e-scratch.html

[Vignesh2508]

Hi Tobi,

Thank you for your reply. This might be the problem. My stl file is a 3d model of a car. But I was trying to do a 2D simulation from that. My idea was to do a sHM on the model and then finally do an extrudeMesh to convert that to a 2D mesh. In my blockmesh file i tried to choose a domain of thickness 0.1m.

In this domain of 0.1m the model is not protruded straight but has an angle. This might be the reason why i got the problem on the interface between the surface and the mesh. Even if i add layers that is not properly applied on the surface.

Can you suggest me a method to do a 2D simulation of that without this problem?


Thanks


Vicky

[enginpower]

Hello,
I followed the methods explained here to get a closed STL file but with different patches. As in the tutorial, I have different patches and I created correctly submesh to accord the mesh on common edges. It works greatly.

When I checked the surface I get this:

Surface is not closed since not all edges connected to two faces:
    connected to one face : 192
    connected to >2 faces : 0

I watched again all the model and I found that the problem is that some surfaces of the same group is not connected. How is it possible?
I have the group of inlet surfaces, the group of wall surfaces etc... and looking to the group of wall (the same mesh), I have some surfaces that are not connected. Again the problem is not between inlet surface group and wall surface group, but in the same group. How to solve that? It seems does not occur in the tutorials

Thanks for your help

[silencebreak]

Hey there,

I'm trying to create a waterproofed STL for OpenFOAM with salome. I've created them in other cases without problems the way Tobi described.

After I created a solid out of the geometry in salome, which is done without any errors, the surfaceCheck in OpenFOAM tells me that my case isn't waterproofed. So how does it come that salome says it's waterproofed and openfoam says it isn't?
The error is that some are single and some a multiply connected. If interested I can upload the .hdf file

Thank you in advance

[sisetrun]

Hello Oliver,

Did you mesh your solid before exporting as an stl?

have a look at Tobis screencast on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBmB...GLaiE2oL3CN4WA

Best regards

[silencebreak]

Originally Posted by sisetrun

Hello Oliver,

Did you mesh your solid before exporting as an stl?

have a look at Tobis screencast on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBmB...GLaiE2oL3CN4WA

Best regards

Thanks for the reply. Actually I thinks it's been an error of handling Salome with an extreme case of open boundaries. So I just draw my stuff from the scratch and now it worked after creating a single solid

[alinuman15]

Originally Posted by Tobi

Dear Vignesh,

if you have several surfaces in Salome you are not allowed to export these surfaces in the geometry module. You have to mesh the surfaces in the mesh module to make a homogeneous discretization on the lines. If you export these STL files then you end up with a waterproofed STL. That is the way I prefer for all STL's.

To check it, just load your exported STL into paraview. You will see that the contact lines will not share the same triangle points.

Dear Tobi:-
I have struggled with exporting mesh as stl file by using Salome for a while. Look at the inserted image where when I mesh the surface in mesh module and export it as stl , I face that warning and even when I skip it, it will not produce the good waterproofed stl file.
Any clue how to handle that ?
Knowing that I installed different versions of Salome ( now Meca 2017) but the problem still there.
Thanks !

[Tobi]

Hi,

the error message you get is normal. I got the same message too. Hmmm... actually never focused that problem. Can you upload the STL file of that particular patch? You can try exporting

LC_ALL=C

start Salome and try it again. However, Salome itself should overwrite (temporary) based on that output:

WARNING:salomeContext:Overwriting environment variable: LC_NUMERIC=C

I am using the Salome version given at Salome-Platforms.

[alinuman15]

Originally Posted by Tobi

Hi,

the error message you get is normal. I got the same message too. Hmmm... actually never focused that problem. Can you upload the STL file of that particular patch? You can try exporting

LC_ALL=C

start Salome and try it again. However, Salome itself should overwrite (temporary) based on that output:

WARNING:salomeContext:Overwriting environment variable: LC_NUMERIC=C

I am using the Salome version given at Salome-Platforms.

Thank you for replying Tobi :-)
I typed LC_ALL=C in terminal (without defining OF environment) and it defined LC_ALL environmental variable fine. But, I got the same warning when tried to export the inserted file agin on mesh module.
Waiting for your feedback
Note:- You could find the regionSTL.stl ( for the whole patches) on the following link:-
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/f...l82TEl6NNXJFGP

[Tobi]

Can you dump the study as python Script and share it? The warning is common.

[alinuman15]

Originally Posted by Tobi

Can you dump the study as python Script and share it? The warning is common.

I attached the dump study and have another question ( in addition to the warning):-
As you can see the triangle and background stls together represent the bottom of the cube. If my focus is to refine them only with snappyHexMesh (knowing that all the rest stls are patches as well), is that true to include just triangle and background inside the features subdictionary of castellatedMeshControls as follows:-
features
(
{file "triangle.eMesh"; level 3;}
{file "background.eMesh"; level 3;}
);
?
Thanks again!

[Tobi]

Hi,

if you want to refine surface this is wrong. Please check that: https://holzmann-cfd.de/training/sta...enfoam-project

You study and the export is working as expected. Maybe you are doing: File -> Export -> STL. That is wrong. Go to mesh module, right click on the object you want to export -> Export -> STL. Done.

[alinuman15]

Originally Posted by Tobi

Hi,

if you want to refine surface this is wrong. Please check that: https://holzmann-cfd.de/training/sta...enfoam-project

You study and the export is working as expected. Maybe you are doing: File -> Export -> STL. That is wrong. Go to mesh module, right click on the object you want to export -> Export -> STL. Done.

I did it that way but the warning is still showing up.

[RANSES]

Dear all

I profit from the open thread for asking few questions on the same topic.
I'm working on ABL (Atmospheric Boundary Layer), simulating the flow-field around buildings or city districts (real scale), with a geometry whose dimensions can easily reach more than one kilometer in radius. Recently I tried to simulate the Shinjuku district of Tokyo in OpenFoam, facing a huge number of difficulties, starting from the construction of the mesh.
As stressed before in this thread, I use blender to create/edit the geometries and to export them in .stl, for finally meshing in snappyHexMesh.
The original .stl file on which I'm working can be easily downloaded from https://www.aij.or.jp/jpn/publish/cfdguide/index_e.htm , it is free of copyright. Since the high instability of the simulations, I also fear there could be a problem in the geometry.
In this regard I would like to ask you if Blender could still be considered as a useful/proper software for fixing these problems (from a geometry check, there are many of them: non manifold edges, bad contain. edges, intersect face, etc)....and if there are some good suggestions on how to export in the best way a .stl from blender to be finally used in OpenFOAM... e.g. the geometry should be triangulated or quadrilateral?
What I fear is that, in some conditions, there could be better software than blender for modeling the geometry to be used in CFD. Is this a legit fear?
If you could share your personal experience and suggestions, it would be much appreciated.

[SOORYA]

Dear Sir,


I am an MTech Student from IIT Bombay. I am simulating continous casting of steel systems. I have made the geometry in SolidWorks. Have imported the .STEP file in Salome and created various groups like inlet outlet as .STL files. I have merged the various .STL files in terminal as single .STL file. While performing snappyHexMesh command on the single merged .STL file i am not getting many features similar to my SolidWorks geometry. Unable to find out the reason for the same. Kindly help.


Mail Id: sooryaprakashj@gmail.com

Regards,
Soorya Prakash