[Chilli83]

Hi

For the present 8 year of my career I have not seen any program that allows to make a directly transfer of a BIM model into a CFD code like Ansys CFX, Star CCM+ or OpenFOAM. For me it seems like all the layers like in a wall and poor drawing in for example Revit doesn’t make a complete water tight model. Thereby when exporting the model from Revit gives a model with a lot of solid components which are not usable when one should try to make a computational mesh. A lot of time needs to be used to repair the geometry to reach a point where a water-tight geometry is made. It is often faster to draw it from scratch instead.

So my question is; are there anybody out there that know some kind of program maybe a parser that can take out the inner shell of a building and make it water- tight solid so it is possible to make a computational mesh without making any thing to the CAD?

[akidess]

In what way are the BIM models different than any other CAD model? Can you post an example?

[arjun]

Originally Posted by Chilli83

Hi

For the present 8 year of my career I have not seen any program that allows to make a directly transfer of a BIM model into a CFD code like Ansys CFX, Star CCM+ or OpenFOAM. For me it seems like all the layers like in a wall and poor drawing in for example Revit doesn’t make a complete water tight model. Thereby when exporting the model from Revit gives a model with a lot of solid components which are not usable when one should try to make a computational mesh. A lot of time needs to be used to repair the geometry to reach a point where a water-tight geometry is made. It is often faster to draw it from scratch instead.

So my question is; are there anybody out there that know some kind of program maybe a parser that can take out the inner shell of a building and make it water- tight solid so it is possible to make a computational mesh without making any thing to the CAD?

I think you could write a program to convert it into the format that is easier to handle for CFD solver.

[LeeRuns]

Hello,
Let me preface my response by stating that. I have never used revit amd i dont know structure of a BIM file. If revit has a way to script via python u could write a module to do this. Both Salome and Blender have the ability to convert a CAD typically an stl into a watertight mesh. So maybe workflow would be something like
1. Py script to break down him into .stl files
2. Py script to load those .stl into blender
3. Py script to in meshing in Salome or blender.
4. Py script to export and save.

In my experience unless u need to repeat the workflow many many times then this may not be the ideal way. To address the challenge. I find that Salome python scripts are great for doing things like the same task hundreds of times.

[LeeRuns]

Hey there, still would like to be helpful. There is an alpha release blender addon that deals with bim.



This should fix your problem


Installing Blender is really easy you just go to their website and click download
https://blender.org



Then to get the alpha release for bim go here
https://blenderbim.org/download.html


Also worth noting that there are a lot of things that I can do in blender more easily that other platforms like AutoCad, and Solidworks. They are similar tools but with different target user pools. As simulation development engineers we are typically the overlap between those pools. Professionals in 3d animation "crush" their meshing. Meaning they are really good at it. IMHO.



If you want to test it out would be happy to do a videochat and walk you through it.