Exchange

The afem.exchange package provides a number of common tools for data exchange including BREP (OpenCASCADE native format), STEP, IGES, and STL. The tools can be imported by:

from afem.exchange import *

Some specific use-case tools are provided including streamlined processing of STEP files from NASA’s OpenVSP program. These data exchange tools can be used to import or export data to other CAD or CAE tools.

BREP

The afem.exchange.brep module contains two simple methods for reading and writing OpenCASCADE BREP files.

STEP

IGES

STL

XDE

OpenVSP

The ImportVSP tool is developed specifically for translating STEP files exported from the OpenVSP program. The primary motivation for this tool can be summarized by needs:

  1. Automatically translate the OpenVSP standard components (e.g., MS_Wing, Fuselage, etc.) into watertight solid shapes.

  2. Communicate additional metadata about the OpenVSP model and components (e.g., name, type, etc.) through the STEP file.

The first need is accomplished by essentially pre-processing the OpenVSP geometry from the STEP file based on a set of assumptions and rules:

  • Surfaces of unique OpenVSP components are grouped into geometric sets in the STEP file. These are translated to compounds and it is assumed that they define a single OpenVSP component (or one body of a component if symmetric).

  • Each surface of the referenced by the geometric set is first checked to see if it is planar. If so, the underlying surface is replaced with a plane instead of the B-Spline surface. This may be applicable to surfaces representing wing caps or thick trailing edges.

  • The surfaces are sewn together and at this point should form a closed solid shape.

In a script-based environment, the user cannot “point and click” to identify which solid body represents a particular component. For that reason, a forked version of OpenVSP was made and modified to include useful metadata in the STEP file. The metadata includes the component name, type, and additional degenerate geometry like a wing reference surface. All of this can be optionally exported on the STEP export screen (default is off). Without this metadata, solid bodies can still be built, but are given generic names like “Body.1” and it will be left to the user to decipher which represents the original OpenVSP component.

For now, the forked OpenVSP version with metadata can be found here under the step_metadata_support and step_metadata_support_v3.5.0 branches. Support for version 3.5.0 was provided since the underlying surface parametrization seemed to have changed afterwards and OpenCASCADE performance suffered.

Both of these builds include the Python API.

NASTRAN