FEM FemMesh2Mesh

FEM FemMesh2Mesh

Menu location
Mesh → FEM mesh to mesh
Workbenches
FEM
Default shortcut
None
Introduced in version
-
See also
FEM tutorial

Description

This tool converts surfaces of 3D elements or whole 2D elements of a selected FEM mesh to surface mesh. Internally, it picks FEM mesh element faces that are unique (not shared by two elements) and uses them to create faces of a surface mesh. Optionally, it can be used to save a deformed mesh. This is done by adding the displacement of the FEM results to the mesh nodes (the scale of the displacement can be set using Python).

introduced in 1.0: The tool also creates a Mesh2Fem object which is a triangular FEM mesh generated from the surface mesh.

Usage

  1. Select a FEM mesh object.
  2. Optionally also select the FEM results.
  3. There are several ways to invoke the command:
    • Press the FEM mesh to mesh button.
    • Select the Mesh → FEM mesh to mesh option from the menu.

Scripting

Note: The parameter scale was introduced in 0.21. For older versions of FreeCAD omit it from your code.

The cantilever example in FreeCAD version 1.0:

from os.path import join
import FreeCAD as App
import Mesh
from femmesh import femmesh2mesh

path = join(App.getResourceDir(), "examples", "FEMExample.FCStd")
doc = App.openDocument(path)
fem_mesh = doc.FEMMeshGmsh.FemMesh
result = doc.CCX_Results
scale = 10  # displacement scale factor
out_mesh = femmesh2mesh.femmesh_2_mesh(fem_mesh, result, scale)
Mesh.show(Mesh.Mesh(out_mesh))