Removing Small Geometric Entities with Remove Details

This tutorial demonstrates the use of the Remove Details operation for automatic defeaturing of the very same wheel rim geometry as in the previous two tutorials. Remove Details leverages virtual geometry operations to automatically detect and delete small features on the finalized geometry.

The repair and defeaturing tools that find and delete small geometry features can operate only within the limits of what is allowed by the topology of the geometry. To handle more complex cases, where defeaturing fails, you can use virtual geometry operations. With these tools you can set geometric entities, such as vertices, edges, or faces, to be ignored by the mesher. Since selected elements are “hidden” from the mesher, meshing takes place on a virtual geometry, hence the name virtual operations.

Virtual operations work on the finalized geometry, that is, the geometry after the Form Union or Form Assembly nodes. This means that using these operations you may remove small domains that result from intersecting solid objects. Another benefit is that they keep the curvature of the geometry, which may be important when removing larger faces, or for certain physics applications where altering the curvature of the geometry can, for example, give rise to stress concentrations.