Problem with mesh creation

General Questions
1

Good afternoon All,

I have some trouble for the mesh creation of the fan in the pic below:

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The assembly are made by an internal hub and an external fan.

I tried many times to change the Mesh Parameters (with and without the Compound of both parts) but without any solution.

I cannot change so much the geometry files, so I was trying to change the parameters of the mesh but with no good results….

Where am I wrong?

I apply here both files:

Studio_ventola_17pale_ECO46C.pmx (3.9 MB)

I need to perform a Modal analysis, so I’m interesting to creare a homogeneous mesh instead a detailed mesh.

WBR

Marco F.

2

Maybe you could at least get rid of such small faces:

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Would be good to simplify those fillets because the meshers may struggle with them.

There are some other issues too:

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image849×455 19.2 KB

You could try the Geometry → CAD Part → Defeature tool in PrePoMax, but it’s definitely better to improve the geometry in CAD software before importing it for analysis.

3

Thank you for your answer.

Unfortunately this happen only when I’m importing the STEP file (created in Solidworks 2020) inside PrePoMax. The file in Sw did not have this kind of very small details.

What I was trying up to now is create the simulation in Solidworks Simulation, export in Abaqus format the simulation (mesh); import it into PrePoMax and resetting the sim.

Seems to work…

WBR

Marco F.

4

Try reimporting the file or (even better) importing to other CAD software. Export to STEP may sometimes mess up the geometry. But simplifying it (e.g. removing small fillets) is the way to go whenever possible.

That’s also an option - you can generate the mesh in a different software (commercial or FOSS) and import it to PrePoMax. This sometimes provides additional capabilities - more settings, quality verification tools and so on.

5

Problem with radii.
If the analysis allows, perform it without radii.

Screenshot 2026-01-26 114111
Screenshot 2026-01-26 1141111634×1226 614 KB

6

What software did you use to remove them ? Commercial CAD system ?

7

In this case Catia v5, because that’s where I’m currently working.

Workflow:

  1. Export STEP from PPM,
  2. Import STEP into Catia,
  3. Remove radii,
  4. Add radii again,
  5. Export STEP from Catia,
  6. Impost STEP into PPM and mesh.

See image above E=483676.
Without radii, the number of elements can be much lower.

8

The example above is relatively simple.

Hard nut for meshing (also for commercial SW).

image
image823×582 60 KB

9

The Defeaturing tool in PrePoMax and FreeCAD (it uses the same OCC feature) failed to remove these faces because of the complexity of the overlapping fillets, but something like virtual topology in Abaqus (ignoring small faces and edges) would suffice too.

Of course, it should be easier for the OP to just improve the parametric model in his CAD software before export.