Work with imported STL geometry
 

Hello everybody,

Since I am new to ICEM, I hope you don't mind a little question. So far I have created a STL geometry with Blender and want to mesh it with ICEM now. I have two options to get my stl imported now:

Import STL geometry: ICEM only imports the curves which are necessary to describe the shape of the object. Curves can be , yes, curved.

Import STL mesh: ICEM imports the triangled mesh as I created it in Blender. There are no curves, only straight edges.

Please correct me if I'm already wrong with this!

I first tried to import only the STL geometry because I thought it was a "cleaner" way to do it. My STL was already patched in Blender, therefore I chose "Part names from file" in the STL import options and my patches show up as parts as expected.
Next I wanted to setup a curve mesh in order to define the mesh at an edge of my geometry (Mesh -> Curve Mesh Setup). The problem is I can't select any curve of my geometry. How do I make my imported geometry be recognizable by the mesh definition tools?
In the tutorials I found so far they always use the automatic feature extract function which I don't want to use because I already have a patched geometry.

If anyone knows any tutorials or can give me a quick step by step guide I'd be very grateful.

I also tried with the "Import STL mesh" option but didn't succeed so far. Any guides regarding this are also welcome.

Best regards and thanks in advance,

Kate

Hello,

I meshed my geometry without the curve mesh setup for now, for training purpose. I am still interested in a solution, however.

Next I tried to build 31 prism layers with an initial height of 1.8*10^-5 m and a total height of 0.02 m and set the values in the Global Mesh Setup menu accordingly. The Height ratio equals 3.5 (calculated by ICEM). This value seemed quite high for me. When I calculated it with numbers, I got an height ratio of 1.2 with the following heights:

The sum of these values is 0.021 m. I just can't find my mistake. And when I look at the mesh afterwards, I can see that the second layer is about 3 times as high as the first one. But the ratio is in the range of 1.1 (inspected visually) at the layers # ...27, 28, 29.

It would be very helpful if anyone could explain this.

Best regards, Kate

Edit: I have attached two screenshots to explain what I'm complaining about in a better way.

Hello again,

I am still struggling with the two problems from the previous posts.
And I experienced another challenge today:
I have one part (object) which intersects with another one(side). At the object part I am growing a boundary layer and it works fine except for at the intersection line with the side part.
I want the prism layer go all the way to the intersection line while keeping the specified height (in a way you could even see the layers in the surface mesh of the side part)

Here are the steps I take:

1) Import Geometry -> Faceted -> STL -> take parts from file (my *.stl file is already patched)
2) Global mesh setup -> Global mesh parameters -> Global Element seed size -> Max element 0.5 -> apply
3) Prism Meshing Parameters ->
Growth law linear
Initial height 1.8*10^-5
Height ratio 7.327...
Number of layers 20
Total height 0.022
-> Apply
4) Part mesh setup -> object: prism checked, maximum size 0.01 -> Apply
5) Compute Mesh -> Volume Mesh -> Create Prism Layers checked -> Compute

The result I get can be explained best with the attached picture I guess.

Would be nice if anyone could comment on this.

Best regards,

Kate