Hypermesh Week 11 Challenge - Morphing & TCL Command File Creation

OBJECTIVE

To morph the mesh of the given side body component of a car according to given specifications, in addition to writing a macro for the morphing process carried out:

CAD MODEL IMAGE

This is the component that was provided:



PROCEDURE

1. The component received is a mesh completely. There are no surfaces. For the sake of comparison at the end of this challenge, the surface shall be generated from this mesh. This is done by going to Geometry > Surfaces > From FE. All the elements are selected and then the surface is generated.

There may be issues with the surface generated (like missing surfaces). They can be fixed using toggle/surface creation tool but it is not necessary as we just need to have an idea of the original shape of the component.

2. The next step would be to create morph volumes from the mesh. This can be carried out by going to Tools > HyperMorph > Morph Volumes > Create. All the mesh elements need to be selected and 'create' is clicked to generate morph volumes.

3. These 'handles' are the control points for the freestyle morphing we will be carrying out later. But with just this many handles, the accuracy achieved in the actual morphing process will be severely affected as each handle controls a large region of the mesh, regions we probably don't intend on morphing at all. To work with this, we will need to split the morph volumes further. By splitting the volume, we generate more handles and more accurate morphing results.

This can be done by going to Tools > HyperMorph > Morph Volumes > Split/Combine. We can select the number of splits as per our requirement.

4. Now we can go ahead and move the handles to morph the component as per the given requirements. This is done by going to Tools > HyperMorph > Morph > Move Handles. Now it is just a matter of selecting the handles and moving them. Care must be taken to select the right combination of handles to facilitate the morphing process. Another point to note is that the undo command does not work here. The native undo option in this section needs to be used instead.

5. If more accuracy is required with morphing certain regions, the existing volumes can be split further by going to Tools > HyperMorph > Morph Volumes > Split/Combine and selecting the region that requires splitting. Again, the number of splits need to be specified as well.

TCL COMMAND FILE

1. The next objective is to generate a macro for the entire process. This is generated from the command.tcl file in the same location the morphed component is saved. The file is opened using notepad and the necessary commands carried out can be copied onto a separate file and saved as a separate .tcl file. (NB: Commands like 'rotate', 'viewset' are not important to the morphing process and are the commands that aren't considered necessary)

2. This new .tcl file (the macro) can be run via Hypermesh through File > Run > Tcl/Tk Script. This programs Hypermesh to carry out the entire process on its own, repeating the steps we carried out in a shorter time.

FINAL MODEL IMAGES

RESULT

The given component was morphed as per requirements to the desired design and the macro file was generated as required.