Exporting Parasolid from SolidWorks

Save out your Model as a parasolid from SolidWorks. Note that you will want the geometry as close to ready for meshing as possible, as performing model "surgery" in SimModeler is not always straight forward. The outputted file from SolidWorks will have the format <file_name>.x_t.

If you do not have a parasolid model of your own, you may use the On Ramp example file located at:

/projects/tutorials/OnRamp/example_geom.x_t

Ensure that you are on one of the viznodes and not portal1. You may tunnel to viz003 by opening a terminal and running:

vglconnect -s viz003

Navigate to and copy your file into your working directory. Typically, we create a folder where all the simulation files are stored. For example, after opening a terminal I could run the commands:

mkdir Demo
cd Demo

This would place me in my working directory 'Demo'. To copy all the files for the On Ramp demo, run this in your 'Demo' directory:

cp /projects/tutorials/OnRamp/* .

Next, you'll want to change the parasolid file extension from .x_t to .xmt_txt. To do this, run mv <file_name>.x_t <file_name>.xmt_txt from your terminal. From here, you are ready for the convert step. The convert step is documented here: https://fluid.colorado.edu/tutorials/tutorialVideos/Convert2Sim_Tutorial.mp4

Summary of video:

1. Ensure convertParasolid2Sim.sh and <file name>.xmt_txt are in your working directory. 

2. Set environment with soft adds found in more ~kjansen/soft-core.sh

3. Run ./convertParasolid2sim.sh <file name>.xmt_txt in your terminal

4. Convert step is complete and your directory now contains 3 new files: model.smd relations.log & translated-model.smd. The translated-model.smd file is the one we need moving forward in this tutorial.

Once the convert step is complete, you are ready to move onto the next step and use SimModeler to create a mesh for the new translated-model.smd file we created!

Geometries with Standalone Surfaces

There are sometimes cases where models will contain not only three dimensional solid bodies but also surfaces. Surfaces are treated differently by Solidworks and parasolid files than solid bodies, so they need to be exported separately. In order to do this, you select all entities except the surface and save as a parasolid, after you hit save, Solidworks will ask if you want to save all of the geometry or only the selected geometry, the second option being the one we want. Now do the same but only select the surface. In newer versions of Simmodler, only the domain needs to be run though the conversion and the surfaces can be added as parasolid files. In older versions, these two separate parasolid files needed to be converted to .smd separately (remember to rename files after they are converted to avoid overwriting) and recombined in Simmodeler. The toolchain seems to fail for multiple unconnected surfaces, so if this is the case, take care to export them separately.

To recombine, simply open the solid body file in Simmodeler, under the "Modeling" tab select "Add Parts", add the surfaces file, then select "Make New Manifold Model" which will combine the files into one model that is suitable for PHASTA.