Advances in

Pre-Processing

Laz Foley
Confidence by Design
Chicago June 14, 2012
1 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012
 Outline

• ANSYS DesignModeler
– Modeling Improvements
• ANSYS SpaceClaim Direct Modeler
– Workbench Integration and Model Preparation
• ANSYS Meshing
– Assembly and General Meshing Improvements
• ANSYS ICEM CFD and ANSYS TGrid

2 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 ANSYS 14.0 Geometry Advances

Focus on enhancing your productivity through new

features, increased flexibility, efficiency and usability
• ANSYS DesignModeler
– Core modeling improvements
– Application-specific modeling (e.g. IcePak)
• ANSYS SpaceClaim Direct Modeler
– Improved Workbench integration
– Enhanced Model Preparation
• Interoperability
– Support for new CAD releases
– New CAD file readers

3 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Direct Entity Input for Modeling Operations

• Direct entity selections are

accepted for Extrude, Revolve,
Sweep and Skin/Loft
operations
• Named selections and sketches
remain supported as valid
inputs for greater automation
and flexibility

Extrude Revolve Sweep

4 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012
 More Hot Keys

New set of hot keys (short cuts) for frequently repeated operations

F3: Apply Ctrl-F: Toggle Face selection filter

F4: Cancel Ctrl-B: Toggle Body selection filter
F6: Toggle display Sketching mode only
(shaded+edges/shaded/wireframe) Ctrl-Z: Undo
F7: Zoom to Fit Ctrl-Y: Redo
Ctrl-A: Select All Ctrl-C: Copy
Ctrl-P: Toggle Point selection filter Ctrl-X: Cut
Ctrl-E: Toggle Edge selection filter Ctrl-V: Paste

5 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Additional Visualization Controls

• Improved visualization controls for modeling and topology verifications

• Available through View options or directly from the Toolbar

Edge Direction Display Vertex Display

6 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Additional Usability Enhancements
Single/Box selection toggle
• RMB + LMB combination to easily toggle between the two selection modes
Auto Freeze during slicing
• Slice feature and Slice Material operations are now available for all bodies
– Both active and frozen
• Active bodies involved in the slice are changed to frozen state automatically

Bodies involved in the slice are

Active Bodies changed to a frozen state
automatically
7 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012
 Improved Named Selection Transfer and Error
Handling
Improved Named Selection transfer between ANSYS DesignModeler and other
ANSYS Workbench applications
Improved Error handling
• Attach failures
• Share topology failures

Improved error handling to provide

A new export property inside appropriate error and warnings in
DesignModeler to control named case of failures
selection transfer to other
workbench applications
8 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012
 Electronics Tool Improvements - 1
Significant improvements in the custom tool to automate model
simplification for flow and thermal analysis by IcePak
• Display of IcePak icons for IcePak bodies in the feature
tree
• Part structure transfer to IcePak
• Ability to rename multiple bodies in a single step for
easy organization

9 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Electronics Tool Improvements - 2
• Support for additional object types
Additional object types and
– Axis aligned annular cylinder extrusion method for more
– Axis aligned conical frustum realistic simplification of
– Axis aligned annular conical frustum complex models
• Support for Polygonal extrusion

10 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Performance Improvements
Example CAD to CAD to DM DM to
Meshing/Mechanical Transfer Time Meshing/Mechanical
Transfer Time (Sec) (Sec) Transfer Time (Sec)
R14.0 R13.0 % R14.0 R13.0 % Diff R14.0 R13.0 % Diff
Diff

Model 1 88.9 94.3 -5.7 233 176 32 82.4 81.3 1.2

Model 2 223.6 230.9 -3.1 650.1 746.5 -12.9 165.1 173.8 -5.0

Model 3 86.9 150.1 -42.1 76 137 -44.6 41.9 48.4 -13.3

Model 4 128.7 137.4 -6.3 168 173 -2.5 37.2 49.0 -24.0

Average Improvements
CAD to Meshing/Mechanical 16%

11 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012 CAD to DM 32%; DM to Meshing/Mechanical 10%
 Improved CAD Interoperability
Several new readers to provide two types of
interfaces for all major CAD systems for improved
productivity and flexibility
• Associative Interfaces
– Associative, parametric and Bi-directional
• Readers
– Native file readers for users without live CAD access Pro/Engineer

GAMBIT reader is enhanced to support non ACIS

geometry
A new DWG Reader for AutoCAD
Improved model processing for faster and targeted
updates
ANSYS DesignModeler

12 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 CAD Interoperability Options

New(updated) Geometry Interfaces at R14.0

Associative Interfaces (Associative, CAD Readers
bidirectional and parametric) • AutoCAD 2012*
• Creo Parametric • Creo Elements/Pro
• Creo Elements/Pro • NX 7.5
• Creo Elements/Direct Modeling • Inventor 2011
• Inventor 2012 • SolidWorks 2011
• SolidWorks 2011 • Catia V5 R20
• NX 8.0 • Catia V4
• Solid Edge ST3 (103) • IGES and STEP
• Solid Edge ST4 • Parasolid 24.0
• CATIA V5 R21 • ACIS R21
• Teamcenter 8.0. 8.1, 8.3 • GAMBIT 2.4
13 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012 * Requires an AutoCAD installation
 CAD Configuration Manager

Configure to select a Reader or an Associative Interface

14 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 ANSYS SpaceClaim Enhancements

• Improved Workbench Integration

• Improved Associativity and data
transfer
• Support for multiple design
points
• Enhanced Model Preparation
Tools for Simulation
• Preview options for Topology
Sharing
• Volume Extract Tool
Improvements
• Additional Selection and Repair
Options

15 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 ANSYS SpaceClaim: Improved Integration

Improved ANSYS Workbench Integration

• Improved Associativity and data transfer
• Support for multiple design points

Preview options for Topology Sharing

• Preview sharing to view topology sharing
before transferring the model into Workbench
• Help detect and fix topology sharing issues
before transfer

16 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 ANSYS SpaceClaim: Volume Extract Tool
Improvements
• Progress reporting
• Options to specify multiple faces as seeds
to create more than one volume in a
single step
• Option to preview face selection
propagation to detect leaks during
volume extraction

17 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 ANSYS SpaceClaim: Improved Selection and Repair

Improved Selection and Repair Options

• More Selection Options
• Select Parents
• Select Children
• ClipView option to isolate and
examine selected region
• Multi-face patch option for fixing
missing faces

Without multi-face With multi-face

ClipView patch on patch on
18 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012
 ANSYS 14.0 Meshing Advances

Focus on enhancing your productivity through new

features, increased flexibility, efficiency and usability
• Rapid Meshing
– Reduce time spent in CAD and Meshing
– Improved handling of complicated geometries
– Extract flow volume during meshing
• General Improvements in Meshing Process
– Improved meshing algorithms
– Improved process and flexibility
– Improved robustness
– Improved speed

19 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Assembly Meshing
Assembly meshing is a top-down meshing approach to mesh all parts at 1 time:
• Use of virtual bodies (material points) to extract flow regions from dirty geometry
• Support for:
– Meshing solids from sheet bodies
– Conformal mesh between parts w/out having multi-body parts
– Support for overlapping bodies

Assembly
Handling face-edge
connectivity

Capping Face

Material
point
20 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012
 Assembly Meshing: Characteristics
• Assembly meshing replaces 13.0 CutCell Meshing at the GUI level
• Supports both CutCell and Tetrahedral meshes
• CutCell meshing maintains characteristics from 13.0
– High fraction of hex and prismatic cells
– Supports global size functions, feature capture, tessellation, etc. controls
– Operates on parts, multi-body parts, etc. with new option to define virtual bodies
– Patch independent:
• Eliminates the need for pinch control and VT operations

• Creates conformal meshes

across parts in contact
– Eliminates the need for multi-body part generation in CAD
• Ability to create flow volumes from
a “closed” set of bodies (sheet or solid)
– Eliminates the need for Boolean/Fill operations in CAD

21 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Assembly Meshing: Flow Volume Extraction

1. Define Coordinate system inside

the Fluid Void
2. Insert a Virtual body
3. Assign the proper Coordinate
System to the Material Point in
the details of the Virtual Body
4. Done

#2

#3

#1
22 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012
 Assembly Meshing: Keep Solid Mesh

In the Assembly Meshing panel, you can choose to

keep or discard the mesh in all solids

Parts can be marked

as Fluids/Solids

23 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Inflation Improvements
Speed and Flexibility of inflation: Industrial Example:
• Several improvements to both • 68 Million cells, 5 inflation layers
• Total Mesh Time:
assembly and part meshing •R13: 6 hrs 39 mins
– Better quality during stair stepping •R14: 3 hrs 38 mins

– Better handling of high aspect ratio inflation

– Improved speed of inflation creation ~30-100%

• Assembly Meshing Flexibility

– CutCell: Full support of 2-stage inflation
• CutCell and inflation in two separate steps
– Within the working session
– Tetrahedron: Uses pre-inflation
• Faster, more layers, and better quality

24 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Assembly Meshing: Automatic Inflation

Also supported for Virtual Bodies

• Program controlled inflation acts only on Fluid Bodies

CutCell + Inflation Tetrahedron + Inflation

25 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Assembly Meshing: Sharp Angle Tool

• A special cell cutting algorithm has been developed to

properly capture sharp 3D angles
• Can be used to improve feature capturing in general
• Insert a “Sharp Angle” and pick adjacent faces
• Example: Mesh without Sharp Angle

Sharp angles in the Flow volume of drill bit

Mesh with Sharp Angle

26 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Assembly Meshing Leak Handling:
Leakage Path
Find leaks using material points:
• Any time you are using material points (for internal flow), and it is
leaking to the outside, you can automatically see the
leak-path together with the surface mesh
There is a small gap between the valve plug and the valve seat

27 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Assembly Meshing Leak Handling:
Contact (Interface) Regions
Using Contacts for Assembly meshing:
• Workbench has extensive capabilities to detect contact
(interfaces) between parts.
• Until now, that contact information has been of little use to
FLUENT users, but that has changed at 14.0
• Contacts have several purposes for
Assembly Meshing:
– Closing of small gaps using contact sizing
– Find thin sections
– Find Contacts For example, in this image
• Features at contact pairs are preserved the circled edges would be
removed without contact
• Contacts are also used in Fluid Surface defined since the feature
picker helper angle is below the default
(40 degrees)

28 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Assembly Meshing Leak Handling:
Closing Leaks up to 1/5 of min size
Pick the face of the valve plug (blue)
Contact sizing: Three simple steps and the edge of the valve seat (red)
1. Insert a Face-Face Contact between
the entities that are leaking
– Face/Face or Face/Edge
2. Drag and drop the contact
#1
on top of the Mesh Icon
– Creates a Contact sizing
3. Adjust Contact sizing
– Should be bigger than the gap
• Limited to gaps up to 1/5 of min-size
4. Generate Mesh
#2

#3

29 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Assembly Meshing: Finding Thin Sections

Why locate thin sections (3D bodies)?

• Avoid Leakage
• The assembly meshing method produces better quality
meshes if thin baffles and fins are well resolved
• By using the Find Thin Sections tool, these can be found
in advance and appropriate sizing can be applied

30 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Assembly Meshing: Fluid Surfaces

Creating Fluid Surfaces for Flow Volume meshing

• Description
– Pick all faces that make up the wetted surface
of the flow volume
• Applications
– Mainly used when only flow volume is needed
• No conjugate heat transfer
• Advantage
– Faster
– Less memory
– Reduction of leakages
• Approach
– Insert Virtual Body
– Insert Fluid Surface (select faces)
31 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012
 Assembly Meshing: Fluid Surfaces

• To manually select all the faces making up all the flow volume
is in many assemblies too time consuming
– To help out with this task,
we have added a new picker helper:
Extend to Connection!
• To use this, you need to have
proper connections defined
– Connections are created
automatically in WB, so to start with:
delete all the old connections !
• Create New Connections
– Make sure min-size is properly set !
– RMB – Find Contacts

32 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Assembly Meshing: Miscellaneous Features

• Size Function improvements

– Separate Min size for Curvature
and Proximity
– Less mesh clustering
– Support for Body of Influence

• “Mesh Unite” Fluid or Solid

bodies using Mesh Groups
– Improve quality of the mesh by releasing geometry
constraints at interfaces

33 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Selective Meshing Worksheet

• Controls order of body meshing:

– Allows selective body meshing to remain persistent
– User can record meshing operations, or add steps manually
For Example: User
wants an all hex
mesh on quarter
piston model

Due to complexity in
meshing, user may
want to control
sequence of meshing
steps
If recording, steps will
be automatically
created.

34 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Selective Meshing Worksheet: Recording

Meshing steps relate to Named Selection:

– When recording, named selections are created for user
For example, if recording meshing steps,
and user meshes 1 body:
1. Step will be added to Worksheet
2. Named selection will automatically be
created #2
3. Step will not be included in output to
solver unless “Send to Solver” is
changed to “Yes’

#3

#1

35 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Selective Meshing Worksheet: Editing

When meshing, if the order in Worksheet needs to be

adjusted, this can be done in 1 of several ways:
1. Add, Delete steps
2. Change Contents
of Named Selection

Note: Add will only append to end of

Worksheet, so option #2 is often
better.

Also, use Active/Inactive options for

more flexibility, see following slides

36 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Virtual Topologies: Interactive editing

Tree view is replaced with graphical selections:

Select objects and RMBOperate, or use icon palette to:

– Merge Edges or Faces
– Split Edges or Faces
– Create Hard Vertex
– Shuffle through VTs (order depicts order of creation)
– Edit VTs to see VT options
– Delete

Virtual Topology Detail View:

– Global behavior
– Statistics view added

37 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Virtual Topologies
Example: Blunt body
Flexibility: Allows user to get mapped or swept mesh for non-
mappable/non-sweepable bodies

38 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Virtual Topologies
Example: Intersecting Pipes
Use Virtual Splits for hex meshing

39 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Hexahedral Meshing

Robustness Improvements:
– MultiZone, Sweep and Thin Sweep
– Improved case handling for MultiZone
MultiZone improvements:
– Performance improvements
– Support for match mesh control
– All Prisms option

40 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 MultiZone: Robustness Improvements

Support for:
• Handling of cylindrical
side faces
• Imprinting
– Through bodies
– Through long stretches of
connected side faces
– Through side faces
– General improvements
• Support for edge splits

41 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 MultiZone: Mesh Matching

Added Support for Mesh Matching:

– Cyclic/Periodic Symmetry and/or match mesh control

42 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 MultiZone: Performance Improvements

Speed Improvements:
– Better performance for swept blocks
– Improved multi-body part handling

14:24
12:00
9:36
7:12
4:48
2:24
0:00
12.1 13.0 14.0

43 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Tetrahedral Meshing
• Robustness and Quality improvements in tri surface meshing, inflation
and tetrahedral meshing
• Separated Min Size for Curvature and Proximity
• Added new option for Advancing Front Triangle Surface Meshing

44 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Connections for Fluent

• In 14.0, information in the contact folder will be written as mesh

interfaces for Fluent
• If you have contacts/connections in an old database, the user is asked to
remove the contact information

• A new WB option to NOT generate contacts automatically is available

45 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Connections for Fluent
• Start Workbench and open ToolsOptions
• Go to Either Meshing or Mechanical
• Unselect “Auto Detect Contact on Attach”

46 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 ANSYS ICEM CFD 14.0 Update
Productivity enhancements through increased
robustness, flexibility, and efficiency
• Over 200 defects and feature requests
resolved
• User interface
– Selection and Display Enhancements
– Model tree enhancements
– Enhanced Subsets
• Mesh Editing
– Enhanced Prism editing, refinement, etc.
• Output
– Enhanced output to CGNS, ANSYS FLUENT

47 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 ANSYS ICEM CFD 14.0 Update
Enhanced Core Meshing Technology
• Hexa Blocking
– Improved interaction
– Enhanced Create, Split, Move, Link,
Smooth, Index control, etc.
• MultiZone
– Enhanced Robustness, Sweep,
Periodicity, etc.

48 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 ANSYS ICEM CFD Update
Enhanced Core Meshing Technology
• Tetra/Prism
– TGrid Implementation Refactored
• New “Batch Refinement Tool”

49 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 TGrid 14.0 Update

Driven by Assembly meshing technology

exposed in ANSYS Meshing
• Assembly Meshing features
– Material points
• /mesh/cutcell/set/create-material-points
– Sharp angle and feature capturing
• /mesh/cutcell/set/set-thin-cut-faces
• /mesh/cutcell/set/set-thin-cut-edges
– Leak path, CutCell-to-Tet conversion, etc.
• Prism speedup (~2x)
• Defect fixing
– Wrapper, CutCell, surface meshing, tet meshing,
topology handling, prisms, etc.
• Updated wrapper templates
– Contact support for latest version, tutorials

50 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Interactive TGrid in ANSYS Meshing
Interactive TGrid through Assembly meshing (Beta)
• Beta option enabled and TGrid (or Extended) license available
• The current geometry will be read into TGrid in a faceted format and Size Function , CutCell
Objects, Features and Inflation controls will be transferred to the TGrid session
• In TGrid the faceted geometries can be checked, SF controls modified, CutCell mesh generated,
checked and improved
• For Tetrahedron, necessary commands to convert CutCell to a tetrahedral mesh are listed in the
transcript window
– Scroll back and cut and paste in the commands
• Session is returned to ANSYS Meshing upon exit

51 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Summary
ANSYS 14.0 Geometry advances greatly improve
productivity through new features, increased flexibility,
efficiency and usability

• ANSYS DesignModeler
– Core modeling improvements
– Application-specific modeling
• ANSYS SpaceClaim Direct Modeler
– Improved Workbench integration
– Enhanced Model Preparation
• Interoperability
– Support for new CAD releases
– New CAD file readers

52 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Summary
ANSYS 14.0 Meshing advances greatly improve
productivity through new features, increased flexibility,
efficiency and usability

• Rapid Meshing
– Reduce time spent in CAD and Meshing
– Improved handling of complicated geometries
– Extract flow volume during meshing
• General Improvements in Meshing Process
– Improved meshing algorithms
– Improved process and flexibility
– Improved robustness
– Improved speed

53 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012

 Advances in
Pre-Processing

54 © 2011 ANSYS, Inc. June 18, 2012