Native STL objects in cfdOF ?

[jr222]

Hi, is it possible to use a mesh (from an STL) ?, say for example for use in an external flow model (i.e., putting inside a box and assigning a no-slip wall BC to the entire mesh)? Thanks in advance.

[oliveroxtoby]

Hi, is it possible to use a mesh (from an STL) ?, say for example for use in an external flow model (i.e., putting inside a box and assigning a no-slip wall BC to the entire mesh)? Thanks in advance.

You should be able to import an stl to use as a surface definition for the body. You would then use the meshing tools supplied to create the CFD volume mesh around this. You can't import an external mesh to use for this at the moment however.

[jr222]

Hi Oliver,

When I import an STL, I cannot select its surface within the "CFD boundary condition" task. I tried the "select from list" button+drop-box, and I also tried selecting it with the cursor. None worked.

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(the shoe is a grabcad STL - Shoe #001 Tiago Müller)

Thanks

[chrisb]

None worked.

Of course not, as Oliver had told you:

You can't import an external mesh to use for this at the moment however.

Apply Part->Create shape from mesh and then
Convert to solid.

[jr222]

Chrisb,
In OpenFOAM speak, an STL is a surface file, and a mesh is the discretized volume broken into many elements. This is why I came back with the second post.

Oliver,
I have been using openFOAM on and off for a few of years and thank you very much for this contribution that bringing two awesome open source projects together. The advent of BlueCFD, and their kind contribution to bring OpenFOAM to windows (on multicores) is also awesome.

Thanks,

Jose

[oliveroxtoby]

Chrisb,
In OpenFOAM speak, an STL is a surface file, and a mesh is the discretized volume broken into many elements. This is why I came back with the second post.

Oliver,
I have been using openFOAM on and off for a few of years and thank you very much for this contribution that bringing two awesome open source projects together. The advent of BlueCFD, and their kind contribution to bring OpenFOAM to windows (on multicores) is also awesome.

Thanks,

Jose

Thanks Jose! Glad to hear it's useful to you. Thanks @chrisb for the help.

[thschrader]

This is why I came back with the second post.

Hi jr222,

the problem is: the triangulated stl remains triangulated after converting
to a solid (I needed 10 min, FC pushes up to 2,8 GB memory).
The stl has more than 125000 faces (check it with meshes-wb, analyse).
For adressing the boundary-conditions, lets say wall-noSlip, you have to select
every single facet on the body. You get more than 125000 patch entries.
At the moment, there is no (easy) way in FC to reconstruct a smooth surface from triangulated bodies.
My workflow is always to redesign the body with FC to get a body with a smooth surface
and only a few faces.

When using mesh-analysis, you get a lot of intersections in the stl.

btw 1: how can I use cfd for shoes?
btw 2: here is a specialist for shoedesign (microelly)
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... &start=130
btw 3: you are right, the cfd-wb is a novum.

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[jr222]

Shoes and CFD make perfect sense. Aerodynamic shoes are indispensable in daily life

I looked at the shoemaker forum topic, that was pretty serious and cool stuff though.