Dirty STL with small gaps
 

Hello foam-ers,
I would like to study the flow around a volume which has an exterior shape describe by an STL surface. The STL is rather dirty and has gaps (in other words it leaks). However, I want to use snappyHexMesh to generate a mesh on the outside of this surface.
What is the usual way of closing the gaps? Otherwise I end up with mesh in both sides of the surface.

I've seen an undocumented option "gap 0.005" (documents snappyHexMesh) but I cannot understand how to use it.

Thanks,
Dragos

Re:
 

Hello Dragos,

I don't know if you've already tested the following or not;

I usually use adMesh to fix incomplete STL file automatically.
If you work on Linux machine, (assuming Ubuntu or Debian) the software is wuite easy to get installed, e.g.

>sudo apt-get install admesh

Once you install it in your machine,

>admesh --help

will provide you detail instruction to use.

Hope it works.

Best,
Novak

Thanks Novak, I will definitely give it a try.

Dragos

Not yet successful
 

Well I tried it, but it changes structure of the surface. My original stl surface is composed out of many different surfaces, whereas the final output has only one (all the initial surfaces get merged into one).
Is there any way to keep the original surfaces (I think they are called parts in admesh)?

Dragos

Dragos,

Well, so far I've just worked only on simple geometry (like bare ship hull without any appendages) and am afraid I have no idea to fix STL for complex geometries... Thanks.

Novak

Hi,
by executing the first step " sudo apt-get install admesh"
i give this error,
"sudo: apt-get: command not found"
can you guide me more obvious that what is the steps for installing admesh?
thank you very much.

Hi Dragos,

You can manually edit your .stl file with remesh (http://remesh.sourceforge.net/). It works well under Windows and Linux (32bits, I think). It is very easy to use and the resulting .stl are usable by SHM. Another option is to use MeshLab (http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/), but I've had many problems with hole filling tool.

Well thanks,
I will definitely give it a try as soon as I'm in front of my desktop.