COMSOL 6.4 - About the CAD Import Module

Overview of the Included Geometry Tools and Features

The CAD Import Module enables importing 3D designs from CAD files into your simulations. The import capabilities cover the most common 3D CAD file formats: ACIS®, AutoCAD®, IGES, Inventor®, NX®, Parasolid®, PTC Creo Parametric™, PTC Pro/ENGINEER®, SOLIDWORKS®, and STEP. In addition, support for CATIA® V5 is available as a separate add-on. To exchange data with CAD packages, you can export your geometry to the ACIS®, IGES, Parasolid®, and STEP file formats.

Finally, the product provides a wide range of tools for you to prepare an imported 3D design for meshing and analysis. You can interactively search for and remove geometric features, for example, fillets, holes, slivers, small faces, and short edges. You can also modify objects by detaching a portion to form an additional computational domain, or by creating a fluid domain for computation, in case the CAD design only includes the solid parts.


Geometry Feature	ICON	Description
2D Geometry Features
Projection		Project 3D objects and entities to a work plane
3D Geometry Features
Cap Faces		Generate faces from edges to fill gaps and create solid objects, or to partition solids
Check		Check CAD objects for faults, for example tolerance issues and invalid entities
Convert to COMSOL		Convert to the COMSOL kernel representation
Replace Faces		Delete and replace faces
Delete Fillets		Search for and delete fillets
Delete Holes		Search for and delete holes
Delete Short Edges		Search for and delete short edges
Delete Sliver Faces		Search for and delete sliver faces
Delete Small Faces		Search for and collapse small faces
Delete Spikes		Search for and delete spikes from faces
Detach Faces		Detach faces to form a new object from them
Detect Interferences		Search for interferences, such as intersections, gaps, touches, and containments, between objects
Export		Export geometry objects to 3D CAD file formats
Import		Import geometry objects from 3D CAD file formats
Knit to Solid		Knit surface objects to form solid or surface object
Repair		Repair defects and remove small details from 3D objects
Replace Faces		Replace faces by growing surrounding faces or creating new faces