CAD model sliver faces - CFX Mesh - Parasolid?

Ianto

Dear All,

I'm using CFX mesh and have had problems with sliver edges on every Solidworks model I've analysed. Having some experience with Solidworks, I also realise how difficult it is to produce a model of any complexity without their appearance somewhere along the way.

Combining slivers into larger virtual faces in Mesh circumvents the problem, but is a very slow process as the virtual faces themselves can cause problems with meshing - the best approach to creating them is to attempt a mesh after each new virtual face (and only combine two faces at a time). This way if a virtual face is causing a problem it can be identified and deleted easily, otherwise you have to go through a process of elimination - deleting one at a time, and in fact, I've had to delete all in the past and start again as the problem can be impossible to track down.

Needless to say this is a painstaking process and very time consuming.

It's been suggested that saving the model as a parasolid before importing to CFX Mesh might help as it removes the history of how the CAD model was built, and the sliver faces with it - the model just becomes one solid lump as I understand it. I wondered if anyone has any experience/thoughts on this, or indeed any other suggestion to speed up the meshing process?

Many thanks,

Ianto