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Import of ANSYS meshes to Elmer with elmer_au or elmer_ch

Posted: 28 Mar 2018, 14:58
by dan_h
Dear All,

I've been trying to use the elmer_au and/or elmer_ch macro to export meshes from ANSYS, in a format openable by Elmer. Following the instructions in the ElmerGrid manual, I've downloaded the files start56.au, elmer_au.mac, and elmer_ch.mac from <www.nic.funet.fi>, and placed them in the directory that I believe to be the working directory for the subsequent run of ANSYS. However, when I start ANSYS (Workbench 18.1), I can't see any sign of the toolbar buttons for elmer_au and elmer_ch. The most likely explanations are either that I've misunderstood what's meant by "working directory" in an ANSYS context, or that the relevant toolbar buttons are there, and I'm just failing to spot them. So, please will someone explain what ANSYS considers the "working directory", and/or describe what the toolbar buttons look like so I know what I'm looking for?

Thanks,

Dan

Re: Import of ANSYS meshes to Elmer with elmer_au or elmer_ch

Posted: 28 Mar 2018, 16:39
by raback
Hi

A third possibility is that something has changed in Ansys over the years and these do not work anymore.

ElmerGrid supports several formats. What export formats for mesh are currently available in Ansys? Maybe there is something directly usable.

-Peter

Re: Import of ANSYS meshes to Elmer with elmer_au or elmer_ch

Posted: 28 Mar 2018, 17:14
by dan_h
Thanks, Peter.

ANSYS' built-in mesh export facilities appear to support the following formats:

Meshing File (*.meshdat)
FLUENT Input Files (*.msh)
POLYFLOW Input Files (*.poly)
CGNS Input Files (*.cgns)
ICEM CFD Input Files (*.prj)
TGrid Faceted Geometry File (*.tgf)

Anything there sound hopeful for import to Elmer? I notice ElmerGrid's list of supported input formats contains a couple with the extension "msh", but it's not at all clear that they're the same as "FLUENT Input Files".

Re: Import of ANSYS meshes to Elmer with elmer_au or elmer_ch

Posted: 28 Mar 2018, 23:00
by raback
Hi Dan

All of these are proprierity - they don't really try to be co-operarative with open formats.

If you have a simple case maybe you could make a minimalistic example of each. Ascii ones are usually easy to decipher, but I guess this are all binary?

The .msh formats of ElmerGrid are unfortunately not related to Fluent. There has been a FDNEUT format from the Fluent family but I think it has been long formgotten.

-Peter