How to define bound­aries in CAESES for ANSYS ICEM CFD

As most of you probably know, ICEM CFD is a popular meshing software from ANSYS. It is also one of the most used meshing software when we talk about our CAESES® customer base. ICEM CFD can be per­fectly inte­grated in highly auto­mated processes e.g. for CFD-based shape opti­miza­tions and design studies. In our devel­op­ment, we had been working on the con­nec­tion ​“CAESES® / ICEM CFD” quite a lot recently. Our target was the 100% robust data exchange with ICEM CFD in terms of keeping the assigned patch names. The thing is, if you record a meshing pro­ce­dure in ICEM CFD using the replay script func­tion­al­ity, you have to rely on patch names. And these names need to be exactly the same whenever you load in a new design can­di­date. This is not always the case if you use the IGES or STEP import of ICEM CFD. So we needed another solution for our customers. 

Tetin Export

We imple­mented the pro­pri­etary tetin-export (*.tin) from ICEM CFD that is now also offered in CAESES®. This export makes sure that the patch names are trans­ferred as is into ICEM CFD. But how do you assign a patch name in CAESES®? As described in previous blog posts, we use a color mech­a­nism to do that. The user creates a new color with a custom name and assigns it to the patch. That’s it.

Whenever you export such a colored geometry in CAESES® using this new tetin export format, you will always receive the same ​“model struc­ture” in ICEM CFD, i.e. all patch names are exactly the same again. With this, you can fully rely on what you record for a baseline design (i.e. your replay script), and the meshing pro­ce­dure is auto­mated and com­pletely robust. Note that the assigned patch colors get trans­ferred as well. Here is a screen­shot from ICEM CFD where the duct from the previous picture was imported:

More Infor­ma­tion

Inter­ested in more infor­ma­tion about CAESES®? Then check out the link below. Colored patch def­i­n­i­tions are also avail­able for other export formats (STL, IGES, STEP). Just drop us a line if you have further ques­tions regard­ing these export topics.