Colored IGES and STEP Formats for STAR-CCM+

With version 4.1.1, CAESES® supports some kind of ​“colored” IGES and STEP exports. The idea is to detect groups of patches with unique names in meshing software which is par­tic­u­larly impor­tant for auto­mated processes (i.e. design studies and shape opti­miza­tions). CAE packages like STAR-CCM+ from CD-adapco can detect surface patches by their names. CAESES® now writes the color name of a trimmed surface (brep) as the patch name into the export file. This is how it works: 

Step 1: Create and Assign a Color

Just create a new color with an indi­vid­ual name (e.g. ​“outlet”) and assign this color to a brep oper­a­tion or a surface patch (click on the images to enlarge them):

Step 2: Export

There are two new export options in the menu of CAESES® that are ded­i­cated to STAR-CCM+ (IGES/STEP). Just export your geometry by using this new exports. They are also avail­able in the software con­nec­tor for inte­gra­tion of STAR-CCM+ into CAESES®.

Step 3: Import it into STAR-CCM+

The exported geometry can then be imported into the CAD modeler of STAR-CCM+. The surface patches are auto­mat­i­cally detected by their names which cor­re­spond to the color infor­ma­tion in CAESES®. The fol­low­ing screen­shot shows such an import where the color name in CAESES® was pre­vi­ously set to ​“outlet”:

More Infor­ma­tion

We have found this new export option pretty helpful, and we look forward to receiv­ing your feedback on it! If you like to find out more about CAESES®, then just browse through our product pages, and simply drop us a line if you have any questions.