surfaceFeatureExtract Issue
 

Hey all,
I'm still new to OpenFOAM, and am having an issue with the surfaceFeatureExtract command before I get into snappyHexMesh. I am modelling a propeller with 10 blades inside of a domain that has already been created with blockMesh. I have 13 total .stl files for the propeller created with SolidWorks, 10 of them being individual blades. surfaceFeatureExtract works just fine with 7 of the blades and the remaining 3 files I have. However, it gives an error for blades 3,4 & 7. I included that error for blade 3. I logged each of the outputs and I have noticed that a difference is "region edges." For the successful files it states "region edges : 0" while the failed files state "region edges : 4." I also attached a log for both a successful file (logblade1) and failed file (logblade3). I'm a little confused as the blades are all copies of one another. I'm not exactly sure what these mean or if that even is the exact issue, but any help and any ideas are appreciated! Thanks!

Are you sure you need to use surfaceFeatureExtract? Can't you use .stl-s directly, without extracting features?
Also, did you try to check .stl quality? You can do this with surfaceCheck, or third-party software, I suggest Netgen.

I was actually able to get it to work by taking out the mates in SolidWorks before saving the .stl files. For some reason I guess surfaceFeatureExtract doesn't like the mates. But all I need is the geometry anyway so it shouldn't really matter. I'll definitely check using surfaceCheck and see what I can do with Netgen. Thanks for the advice!