How to make boundary patches in STL file
 

Hello:

First, thank openfoam team for the wondful tool snappyhexmesh. I am working on meshing a quite geometry now. I made the geometry from solidworks. Then converted the solidworks file to STL. The problem with solidworks is it exported the geometry as a whole surface. So I couldn't make patches in the stl file. As a workaround, I imported the stl file in Rhino and saved every surface (patch) as a stl file in ASCII format. Then I put all the stil files together (integrated stl file). When I ran snappyhexmesh, I got something like:

===============================================
Shell **** does not support testing for inside
Probably it is not closed
================================================

I went back to open the integrated stl file in several different softwares ( blender, rhino and solidworks) and it looked that the stl file is closed. Does anybody here has a similar problem?

Is there any other way to makes patches for STL files in general?

Thank you so much.

To use inside/outside we requi
 

To use inside/outside we require every edge to have exactly two faces using it. Load in paraview, Filter->Feature Edges and switch on the 'non-manifold' edges. Disable all sharp angle ones (by setting angle to 180?).

Hi Mattijs: It gave me the
 

Hi Mattijs:

It gave me the same error.

Ning

Close stl file
 

Hi,

have you checked if every single solid has the exact syntax? I mean this one:

solid <name>
facet normal 0 1 0
outer loop
vertex -0.019754 -0.15 0.103129
vertex -0.02 -0.15 0.1
vertex -0.019754 -0.15 0.096871
endloop
endfacet
endsolid

Maybe you miss "endsolid" at the end while putting everything toghether. Let me know ;)

Cheers

Julie

I have just used SolidWorks to create stl and boundary patches. But in stl file there are the following lines

solid cylinder_small
facet normal 6.752258e-002 0.000000e+000 -9.977177e-001
outer loop
vertex -1.000000e-001 -5.000000e-004 -1.000000e-002
vertex -9.898832e-002 5.000000e-004 -9.948693e-003
vertex -9.898832e-002 -5.000000e-004 -9.948693e-003
endloop
endfacet

6.752258e-002
-9.977177e-001
I think these numbers creates problem in snappyHexMesh process. Maybe we should try another software to create geometry and mesh such as Salome. Any help will be appreciated.