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How does COMSOL create its mesh on imported CAD geometries?

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Dear community,

I am trying to import geometrical models of the human body to build a virtual man in COMSOL based on the free BodyParts3D database. The database supplies every piece of a human body as a high resolution .obj file, which I convert to STL or IGES (works a lot better during import than STL) for import to COMSOL.

My question is now:
These imported IGES-structures are a mesh already (see Abbildung 1 in the attachment). Some elements are not of high quality but I am not intending to modify the millions of mesh cells in the source material (Abb. 2). What I do want to change/modify is how COMSOL handles these source meshes for its internal mesh calculation. Instead of filling the whole structure with mesh cells to approximate the original shape, it seems to sub-mesh the source mesh cells. This drastically increases the amount of mesh cells in my models (Abb. 3 and Abb. 6).

Is there any best-practice guide on how to import meshed CAD models without "sub-meshing" all source elements? See my sphere example in the attachment (Abb. 4-6). What am I doing wrong in the import workflow that the sphere gets meshed in such a strange way? If the workflow is not working for a simple sphere already, it is obvious that the whole body model is nearly useless.


Best regards,
Thomas

P.S.: Unfortunately I get a "file extension error" during upload (I already remove any non-alphabetical characters), so I had to upload my PDF attachment here:
gigamove.rz.rwth-aachen.de/download/id/GskCsSL4RnAW72

0 Replies Last Post Dec 20, 2012, 12:12 p.m. EST
COMSOL Moderator

Hello Thomas MedIT

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