Car With Wheels Meshing
 

I am trying to use snappy to mesh a car geometry with three bodies: the main body, front wheel, and back wheel. I am suppressing the unwanted bodies, saving as stl, and then copying each stl into constant/triSurface in the case directory. Snappy executes without errors, but the wheels are misplaced, even though they are correctly placed in solidworks in relation to the body of the car.

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Attachment 98789

Hello,

This is a matter of reference frame. STL files are just a list of point coordinates. In order to keep the correct positions, all objects must be exported in the same reference frame.

When exporting your STL in Solidworks you should have an option to choose if you create the STL in the local or global reference frame. Not sure how it is named though as I don't have Solidworks, but you should probably find it in the documentation.

Cheers,
Yann

When you click "Save As" in the dialog there is a button "Options..." which lets you adjust tolerance etc as well as the mentioned Output coordinate system as mentioned by Yann.


You can readily check the produced stls by loading them into Paraview and verify the correct placement.

Thanks AtoHM, Yann

I created a new coordinate system and made sure to export as stl with that system.

Another important note is to ensure that solidworks does not automatically translate the stl to a positive space. There is an option in the export options that should be checked.