Project-2-Meshing of Door Inner Panel Challenge

Aim-To generate the midsurface, clean up and mesh the given plastic component of a car door's plastic panel keeping in mind the given quality criteria.

PROCEDURE

1. After the model is imported, the component needs to be separated into multiple sub-components considering the intricacies and complexity of the component. Different regions have different thicknesses so it's a good idea to segregate based on thickness,Furthermore, some ribs have thicknesses in excess of 5mm. Such ribs won't be midsurfaced and meshed.

2. Before proceeding, the component needs to be defeatured of its fillets. This can be done by accessing Geometry > Defeature > Surface Fillets. All the surfaces need to be selected for the algorithm to detect the fillets within the radius thresholds specified. The next menu lets you remove the detected fillets.

3. Moving on to segregation, we need to assign each region to a separate collector using the Tool > Organize function, a new collector needs to be created to house the region that is to be organized. This can be done in the component tree by right-clicking and by accessing Create > Component.

4. After assigning and separating them into collectors, we can go ahead and extract the midsurface on them one by one. There are two ways to extract the midsurface. We could use the automidsurface option through Geometry > Midsurface but this may not be ideal in most situations here. Instead, we can use the offset option in Geometry > Surface Edit > Offset. The thickness is measured and in each case (using the distance function by pressing F4 or by accessing it through Geometry > Distance), one face of the component is offset to half the thickness through the centre of the cross-section of the region/sub-component.

5. After generating the midsurfaces, we need to attach them to each other as in every case, the generated offsets would be hovering. To do this, we can extend the edges that need to be attached to the corresponding surfaces using Geometry > Surface Edit > Extend.

6. After the midsurfaces are generated, we need to carry out cleanup of the midsurfaces to ensure the minimum length is achieved for all elements of the mesh. Also important to prevent the formation of trias wherever possible by manipulating surface features to facilitate good quality mesh.
This is done by using various quick edit tools like the toggle, replace and split-surface node options. These tools can be accessed via Geometry > Quick Edit.

7. Before we can begin meshing, we need to input the required mesh quality criteria through Preferences > Criteria File Settings.

8. After that, we can go ahead and mesh each sub-component one by one, ensuring meshes between connecting surfaces are equivalenced properly. The target element length is 4mm. We can input this in the mesh options at 2D > Automesh. Select the surfaces that are intended to be meshed and click 'mesh'.

10. After ensuring that we have the best possible quality mesh, we can go ahead and assign the thickness for each meshed component. To do this, we need to go to the collector section and right click to get the option to create a property.

11. After creating the property, all we need to do is assign the thickness property. This is done by right-clicking the respective component and clicking 'Assign'.

13. Finally, we can view the mesh with thickness using the '2D Detailed Element Representation 'tool

RESULT

The given side door panel was meshed as per given quality criteria. Due to it being a plastic component, different regions having different thicknesses was prevalent and the component was split into multiple sub-component as a result before meshing and they were assigned their respective thicknesses.