ahguter Posted January 28, 2013 Posted January 28, 2013 Hello, I was wondering if anyone knew of any structural engineering software that can easily import AutoCAD solids and turn them into a mesh to perform a finite element analysis on them. I have used SAP2000 and it is a little bit of pain to make complicated non-linear forms as a mesh in AutoCAD and then export them to SAP2000. (I do not believe there is a solid to mesh command in autocad yet, if so that would be very nice). Just wondering if anyone has used other software, I have access to STAAD Pro, Ansys, and just about any other program. Ideas and options would be appreciated. Thanks!! Quote
MSasu Posted January 28, 2013 Posted January 28, 2013 You may try to explode the solids into regions or surface entities and after apply the CONVTOMESH command on those. This will give you mesh entities but I don't know if will be recognized by your analysis application or not. Also, please pay attention that the curved faces will be slightly distorted. By exploding again the mesh entities will get 3dface entities; may try to import in this format as well. Quote
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