Discussion Forum

In preparing CAD models for effective modeling, I have made the following I have found the following to be useful:
1) Importing to COMSOL as solids only
2) Ticking the three boxes for repair options in the CAD import window
3) Adjustment of the CAD import tolerance (although I welcome suggestions of science behind this adjustment - thus far I have found no general trend)
4) Use of the repair function selecting all parts of the CAD (incidentally, is there a way to automatically select all parts of the CAD?) and adjusting the tolerance of repair. Similarly to the import tolerance I welcome suggestion as to a procedure to appropriately choose the size.
5) Use of repair functions in Spaceclaim. Although I have not yet found a consistent approach which works reliably. And in some cases I find that Spaceclaim, by performing one repair operation causes other problems - similar to a dog chasing its tail.
6) Virtual operations in COMSOL - ignoring edges etc. I find can sometimes help, though again I have no reliable procedure.
7) The use of extreme variation in mesh size. With smallest mesh size set to similar to the import tolerance and a rate of growth of 50 or more, has facilitated apprently unmeshable geometries in some cases.

The essential question I have is really, does anyone have a consistent method incoproating Spaceclaim, Solidworks and COMSOL to reliably and efficiently generate successful meshes from complex CAD models which are classed as "okay" by Solidworks, yet are problematic to mesh?