Analysis Modeler

Creating 1D Coating Mesh Part

This use case shows you how to create coating 1D mesh part by extracting edge elements of an existing 2D mesh part. A coating mesh can be extracted from a surface mesh part, advanced surface mesh Part, octree triangle mesh part, coating 2D mesh part or any 2D transformed mesh part. This functionality is available in FEM Surface (FMS) product.

CAAAniMeshCoating1D is launched in CATIA [1]. No open document is needed.

CAAAniMeshCoating1D.catvbs is located in the CAAScdAniUseCases module. Execute macro (Windows only).

CAAAniMeshCoating1D includes the following steps:

1. Prolog
2. Extracting the List of Mesh Parts and Publications
3. Creating Mesh part and Assigning Values to its Attributes
4. Epilog

Prolog

...

Sub CATMain()
'----------------------------------------------------------- 
'Optional: allows to find the sample wherever it's installed
  sDocPath=CATIA.SystemService.Environ("CATDocView")

    If (Not CATIA.FileSystem.FolderExists(sDocPath)) Then
      Err.Raise 9999,,"No Doc Path Defined"
    End If
'----------------------------------------------------------- 
' Open the Analysis document 
sFilePath = CATIA.FileSystem.ConcatenatePaths(sDocPath, "online\CAAScdAniUseCases\samples\Surface.CATAnalysis")
Set oAnalysisDocument = CATIA.Documents.Open(sFilePath)

...

Open the Analysis document. The Analysis document is fetched in the documentation installation path, this path is already stored in the sDocPath variable. In the collection of documents, two documents can be retrieved: the Analysis document and the Part document.

Extracting the List of Mesh Parts and Publications

...

'Retrieve the Analysis Manager and Analysis Model
Set oAnalysisManager = oAnalysisDocument.Analysis

'Retreive the part document from Analysis manager
Set oAnalysisLinkedDocument = oAnalysisManager.LinkedDocuments
Set partDocument = oAnalysisLinkedDocuments.Item(1)
Set product = partDocument.Product
			

'Retrieve the analysis model from the list of models
Set oAnalysisModels = oAnalysisManager.AnalysisModels
Set oAnalysisModel = oAnalysisManager.Item(1)

'Retrieve mesh manager and mesh part 
Set oAnalysisMeshManager = oAnalysisModel.MeshManager
Set oAnalysisMeshParts = oAnalysisMeshManager.AnalysisMeshParts

'Retrieve publications from product and retrieve the published surface and edge
Set publications1 = product.Publications
Set pubEdge = publications1.Item("Edge")
...

According to the general Analysis Document structure, this macro uses some standard procedures to navigate or retrieve the required objects. First, from the Document, we find the Analysis Manager Object, the Analysis Models and the Mesh Manager Objects. The extraction of pre-defined geometrical elements is done by using the Reference interface. This is equivalent to the selection of a B-Rep elements inside the interactive application. In this macro the reference is created from the surface mesh part.

Creating the Mesh Part and Assigning Values to its Attributes.

...

'Add the new Coating mesh part to the list of mesh parts
Set coat1D = oAnalysisMeshPart.Add ("MSHPart1DCoating") 
 
'Set the reference to the surface mesh part
coat1D.AddSupportFromReference product, reference1
 
'Assign value to the global specification
coat1D.SetGlobalSpecification "ExtractionType", 1

'Create the local specification
Set meshSpecs = coat2D.AnalysisMeshLocalSpecifications
Set spec = meshSpecs.Add("MSHCoatingLocalSpecification")
spec.SetAttribute "LocalExtractionType", 2

spec.AddSupportFromPublication "ConnectorList", product, pubFace

'Update the mesh part
coat1D.Update

 ...

The local specification specifies the edges which are to be included or excluded while computing the coating mesh. You can specify multiple edges to one local specification. If you want to include some edges, and exclude some other then you need to create at least two local specifications. All the edges which are to be included, can be added as support to one local specification with the attribute "LocalExtractionType" valuated to 1. Similarly edges which are to be exclude can be added as support to other local specification with the attribute "LocalExtractionType" valuated to 2.

Epilog

...
 End Sub
...

To run the macro interactively CATDocView environment variables must be defined.