[Gmsh] Double surfaces after STEP import

Mark van Doesburg mark.van.doesburg at technolution.nl
Wed Feb 9 16:59:25 CET 2011


Hello Matthias,

Thanks for the tip. I've taken a quick look at the code and  it
doesn't seem to compute intersections anywhere. Apparently OCC has some
functionality to do this by itself... I feel really silly :-(

Unfortunately I also lack the time to work on gmsh. If nobody solves this
problem before I start using gmsh again I will have a look at netgen and
if it works port the code to gmsh... but I doubt it will happen this year.

regards,

Mark van Doesburg

"Zenker, Dr. Matthias" <Matthias.Zenker at erbe-med.com> wrote:

	Hi Mark,

	just in case you are still interested in that topic:
	I have briefly tried to find out how this is solved in Joachim Schoeberl's netgen. As far as I understand, he uses OpenCascade for his "geometry healing", which i have already used successfully to repair those double surfaces. Looking into the netgen source, there is a method HealGeometry in occgeom.cpp. I don't have the time to delve into the gmsh code an see how this functionality can be incorporated there. But since you have already done gmsh programming, it may be much less effort for you to try this out.

	Best regards,

	Matthias

	-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
	Von: Mark van Doesburg [mailto:mark.van.doesburg at technolution.nl] 
	Gesendet: Montag, 13. September 2010 09:58
	An: Zenker, Dr. Matthias; gmsh at geuz.org
	Betreff: Re: [Gmsh] Double surfaces after STEP import

	Hello Matthias,

	I worked on that code and consider it a complete faillure. In many cases the OpenCASCADE algorithms would not find the intersections. The initial version was quite simple but at some point I started to stack one workaround on top of the other.

	Currently I do not have the time to work on another method, but some algorithms available in CGAL look promising. But in that case I would probably use BRL-CAD to generate the geometry, and importing STEP into BRL-CAD might be sub-optimal.

	regards,

	Mark

	"Zenker, Dr. Matthias" <Matthias.Zenker at erbe-med.de> wrote:

		Hi,

		I have not done FEM calculations for some time (a year or so). The last
		time I did them (using gmsh and Elmer), I had the problem that in
		geometries imported as STEP files (generated by Solidworks), adjacent
		bodies have their own external surface, resulting in double surfaces at
		the interfaces. When I use the mesh generated by gmsh in a FEM
		calculation (I use Elmer), I get no thermal and electrical connection
		because the body meshes are not connected at the interface. There have
		been attempts to clean up double surfaces in gmsh, but I don't know if
		they have come to a success. Could someone of the developpers update me
		on this point?

		Thank you!

		Matthias 

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