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PowerWRAP Specifications

PowerWRAP is an indispensable CAE mesh pre-processing tool for the rapid transformation of complex CAD models into clean, simulation ready mesh models. PowerWRAP is a pathway to rapidly create a CAE mesh with as much (or as little) geometric detail as desired without the need to painstakingly sort, clean up and convert an extensive CAD model.

PowerWRAP is ideally suited for extremely complex geometries such as underhood automotive applications; PowerWRAP removes months from the mesh creation process by “shrink-wrapping” a clean, water-tight CAE mesh around any collection of geometric components. Thus, full engine assemblies which required 4 weeks to mesh are now ready in 4 hours.

Primary Geometric Modeling Function

Wrapping a manifold mesh around a set of input meshes

• Begin with an unlimited number of tessellated meshes
  • Initial mesh quality does not impede the wrapping algorithm
    (Gaps, holes, overlaps, intersections etc., are permitted)
• Result is clean, water-tight, CAE mesh
  (Mesh can be formatted as either quads or triangles)

User defined wrapping regions:

• Wrapping is performed on all components inside a user-defined domain
• Multiple wrapped components are produced according to part topology
• Interior regions are wrapped if the seed point is located on the interior

Local wrapping resolution (resultant mesh density) is easily controlled:

• Automatically adjusted around:
  • areas of high curvature
  • pre-defined interior or mesh boundary curves
• Explicitly refined around user specified regions of importance:
  • points, planes, lines, surfaces, rectilinear volumes

Face ID’s (PID’s) of original meshes are transferred to elements of the wrapped mesh

Typical wrapping applications:

• Cleaning up an existing mesh model:
  • Eliminating large regions of poor quality elements
  • Eliminating mesh gaps and intersections
• Hundreds of engine components are wrapped into a single detailed mesh
• Vehicle under-frames are grouped into major subassemblies and wrapped

Mesh Quality Checking

The resultant wrapped mesh is checked for quality and corrected:

• Element configuration quality is checked and corrected:
  • Element aspect ratios
  • Minimum element angle
• Intersecting elements are detected and adjusted / removed

File Input

PowerWRAP accepts multiple model inputs.

Direct CAD model input (these are meshed by PowerWRAP before wrapping):

• ACIS SAT file format
• Pro/Engineer file format
• ParaSolid file format
• 3D-Studio file format

Mesh model input :

• STL mesh file format
• NASTRAN mesh file format
• Fast-U unstructured or tetrahedral grids
• Point or Grid data in Plot3D format

File Output

Wrapped meshes are output as either:

• NASTRAN
• STL

Current session data can also be output to a file

• Independent and fully contained native PowerWRAP file
• Capable of recreating the current session from scratch

Supporting Geometric Operations

Existing FaceID’s (PID’s) can be split or recombined, a mesh can be split by or according to:

• Orthogonal planes intersecting the mesh
• Connected elements of the mesh
• Regions isolated by critical edge features in the mesh

New mesh surfaces can be created by:

• Stitching between two critical edge features
• Fill in a loop (hole) defined by a critical feature edge
• Creating a patch between a selected set of points
• Extending a critical feature edge to another mesh surface
• Copying existing mesh components

Large suite of critical edge feature defining tools:

• Define critical edges by inscribed angle
• Define critical edges by neighbor status (un-matched edges)
• Define critical edges manually from selected points
• Extend, trim, combine, etc… critical edges

Mesh transformation:

• Axes independent translation, rotation, scaling and mirroring

Node filtering can be performed to combine close mesh nodes

Typical supported geometry applications:

• Holes and gaps in the input mesh model. These can be identified, plugged and filled preventing the final wrap from entering an objects interior.
• Components missing from the input data can be approximated
• Opposite side of a half model can be created

Measurements & Diagnostics

• Node to node distance measurement
• Wrapped mesh can be clipped in real-time with the three orthogonal planes
• Elements in the wrapped mesh violating quality thresholds are identified and displayed

Scene and Mesh Manipulation

Standard and custom views

• Multiple view windows
• Rotate/zoom/pan
• Trackball rotation + component defined center of rotation

Camera options

• Perspective or orthogonal camera type

Controls shading and lighting

• Shaded, Wireframe or point cloud display

Supported Platforms

PowerWRAP 4.0 is available on the following platforms:

 

Typically handles up to 1.5M polygons (depending on computer)

• 1 Gigabyte of memory for approximately 1.5M elements

 

© 2007 Exa Corporation. All rights reserved. Exa and PowerWRAP are registered trademarks of Exa Corporation. All other products or brands are trademarks of their respective holders. Information subject to change without notice.