Watertight CAD for Integrating Isogeometric Analysis into the Model-Based Enterprise

Today’s Computer-Aided Design (CAD) applications utilize restrictive mathematical assumptions to approximate the compound geometric intersections necessary to represent real-world products. As a result, critical information is not represented within the Model-Based Definition (MBD) for downstream users in the digital thread, forcing engineers to manually repair CAD models and convert them into degraded formats, such as polygonal meshes for Finite Element Analysis (FEA). For Isogeometric Analysis (IGA), the problem is worse as the input required is a watertight spline representation, Although there are current solvers in both academia and industry to run IGA models, there is no automated means to produce the watertight spline representation input form CAD models, a gap in the Model-based Enterprise (MBE). nVariate’s Watertight CAD technology solves this problem by creating geometrically gap-free representations from trimmed surfaces, natively within the CAD application., This requires minimal change to the user’s high-level software interface while the technology fixes the flaws within the CAD model. The resulting model is IGA-ready for existing industrial and academic implementations, as well as for use in forthcoming IGA ISO standards. This is critical in bridging gap in the MBE, integrating IGA into the digital thread.