3D Modeling in ANSYS SpaceClaim

All right, everybody. Good morning and good afternoon for some of you. My name is Ahmed Elghandour. I'll be giving the webinar today on 3D Modeling in ANSYS Spaceclaim. Just before I start, I'd like to pay your attention to our webinar pages. We have these coming webinars.

Feel free to register to anyone. You can find this on our website at OSEEP Engineering. We will have – the coming one will be on signal integrity simulation.

We'll have one on heat transfer fundamentals with ANSYS Mechanical, topology optimization, heat transfer with ANSYS CFD, application, as well as other simulations – other webinars, as you can see here. Feel free to register to any or all of them, as you want. All right.

So, I will start the webinar right now. Quick note before we start. If you have any questions, please type it in the chat window. Either me or my colleague Adam will take care of it. If you lose me for any reason, Adam will jump in to answer your question until I come back. Okay?

Usually, if this happens, it will be not more than one minute, and then I'll come back again to the convention. All right. So, today, we're going to speak about Spaceclaim, which is the 3D modeling tool in ANSYS. So, what is Spaceclaim? Spaceclaim is called a direct modeler software.

It's one of the leading direct modeling tools that people use to create CAD or repair any problems they might have. Spaceclaim, you can use it as a typical CAD model. You start from scratch and create with the sketching, and then you go to model.

Or you can import your CAD from any other software and do your repairing or optimization to this model. With Spaceclaim, it's very easy to do parameterization. You can do any parameterization to any of the dimensions you might have in your model. It makes things very easy.

And if you go to ANSYS, these parameters will move to you if you are doing any parameterization study. So, you can do any of these parameters in your FEA analysis. It will be very easy to do that because it will transfer automatically. Spaceclaim is a really easy-to-learn software.

That's why it has one of the shortest learning curves. Even if you have no background at all in CAD software, you can catch up with Spaceclaim in a very short time. Here's how we start Spaceclaim. It's very easy.

You can just go to the Start menu, go to ANSYS, whatever version you have, 17, 18, or even the latest one now is 2019 R 1. Once you go there, you can start Spaceclaim directly. And then you can start with Workbench, a typical ANSYS Workbench. From there, you import geometry.

And then when you start, you start with new Spaceclaim geometry. This is a typical Spaceclaim window. Here we have the Quadrant Access Toolbar, Save, Undo, Redo, Open, and the Raypan Tool. The Raypan Tool here, which basically has all the functions you can use depending on which tab you are using.

We see here we have Design, we have Insert, we have Display, Measure, Repair, etc. All of these, when you click on each one, you will have this Raypan change based on the tab you're using. We have the Structured Panel, which is the component of your model.

And if you have any planes, any assembly features, it will be showing up here. For the Option Panels, depending on what you're selecting, the options will change based on the action you are working with. Properties, again, it's also changed based on the feature you're working with.

And the Status Bar, a status bar that gives you some information on the model based on the process you are doing, and obviously the graphics window. Spaceclaim is called a Direct Modeler because it works directly to the geometry without any feature-based modeling.

So it's unlike other typical CAD software. You don't really save the process. You don't have a history-based or hierarchy of what you did. So you will not see that I did extrusion, and then I made a hole, and then I did mirroring. Whatever you are doing, the history is not recorded.

What is only saved here is the component of the geometry, and simply an option just like a line, for example, or tangent, or something like that. Or if you have any plane or surface, that's what you will see here, but you don't have any history steps of what steps you have done in your work.

What you can see is the bodies, either solid or surface, curves, sketch or curves, or 3D, like what we see here, assembly constraints, like a line here, for example, and the origin, and planes. If you have any planes added to your model, you will see it here.

With Spaceclaim, you can deal with any of the typical CAD software or CAD files. You can see here, you have ANSYS file, you can read CATIA, regarding the version. You can read an ECAD file. You can read SOLIDWORKS. You can see here, step, file.

You can see SOLIDWORKS, SketchUp, pretty much everything that you might use in CAD. You can read it here with no problem. You can import or export. So, if you have a model, you can import it to Spaceclaim.

And once you're done, you can also resale your work to other extensions if you need to do that. In Spaceclaim, there are different tools, but these four tools here are basically the main tools that you use it to do everything.

We have the Move, the FNC, everything, like literally everything you want to do, you can do it with these four tools. Pull, move, fill, and combine. This is what helps you to create any geometry you are trying to create for your analysis or even just for CAD.

The pull tool is one of the strongest tools in Spaceclaim. You can use it to convert your sketches from 2D to 3D. You can use it to create 3D or even a surface or a line based on what you are pulling. As you can see on the top here, if you are pulling a surface, you get a 3D.

If you're pulling the line, you get a surface. If you're pulling a point, you get a line. So it gives you an extra dimension. The move tool is also the second important tool in Spaceclaim because with the move tool, you can translate parts, translate, rotate, or even create a pattern.

Also, you can use it to make a copy if you want. The fill tool is also a very useful tool in Spaceclaim. You can use it to get rid of any unnecessary features or gaps you might have. You can also use the delete tool, which will give you the same effect as fill in some situations.

The combine tool is very common when you have people use it a lot when they do meshing and sometimes they need to clean the mesh or figure out where the problem is.

You can use slice and then you can use the cutter to cut some part to different components and then start meshing each one until you figure out where the meshing issue is, fix it with Spaceclaim repair, or with the felt, and then you can recombine them again as one part once you figure out where the problem is.

Imprint is a very useful tool in Spaceclaim, especially for people who deal with FEA. It helps you to imprint any coincident faces or edges or vertices, especially if you are dealing with contact or if you're trying to do some CFD analysis and you need some faces to be matching to transfer the data.

Volume extraction is very useful to create the internal volume. Basically, if you have a solid and you have a cavity, this cavity will be filled with fluid for CFD analysis. So you can easily extract this volume using volume extraction in Spaceclaim.

Subpress and activate for physics is a very useful tool as well. Sometimes you import a lot of components in your geometry, but you don't really need that for the analysis if you go to FEA or if you go to the CFD analysis. You can just exclude whatever component from physics.

That means you will have the geometry here, but when you go to the FEA or CFD, it will not be included.

Name selection is very important in FEA or CFD because it helps you to assign loads, boundary conditions, or regardless in structural or fluid, such as inlets and outlets, stuff like that, you will need a boundary condition.

In Spaceclaim, creating name selection or what's called here name selection is very easy. You just select and you define a new group and then you will have it. It could be a feature. It could be a dimension. And it's really easy to create.

You just select it, go to groups, create new group, and give it a name. And then you have it. Okay. I think this is the main quick feature I want to show, and then we can now go to the demo. So if you have any question before the demo, please let me know. No questions. All right.

So we will now go to the demo. So I can show you how to use Spaceclaim in your work. In Spaceclaim, you can import any CAD file or create a new model from scratch. Here, I have imported a model of a car.

As you can see, I can easily manipulate the model, move parts around, and create new geometry using the pull, move, fill, and combine tools. For example, let's say I want to create a new part for the car.

I can start by creating a new sketch on a plane, and then use the pull tool to extrude the sketch into a 3D solid. I can then use the move tool to position the new part where I want it on the car.

If I need to make any changes to the model, I can use the fill tool to get rid of any unnecessary features or gaps, and then use the combine tool to merge or cut different parts of the model together.

I can also use the imprint tool to create coincident faces or edges between different parts of the model, which is useful for creating contact surfaces in FEA or for transferring data in CFD.

Once I am happy with the model, I can use the volume extraction tool to create the internal volume for CFD analysis. This saves a lot of time and effort compared to rebuilding the geometry from scratch.

Finally, I can use the subpress and activate for physics tool to exclude any components that I don't need for the analysis, which helps to reduce the size and complexity of the model. That's a quick overview of how to use Spaceclaim in your work. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Thank you for watching the presentation. If you have any questions, please let me know at support at Ozen Inc. And we will post this presentation on our website so feel free to watch it again or share the link with any of your colleagues. Thank you everybody and have a great day.