best tool for mesh export

- December 5, 2023 at 12:29 pm
  
  Michael Artur
  Subscriber
  
  Hi,
  I am trying to generate a mesh for an acoustic simulation in actran for my master thesis. Actran allows to import cdb files as mesh input. Is there any software tool avaliable that I could use as a student that allows the creation and export of a mesh as a cdb file? I tried it with mechanical by using the \prep7 write commands but as I can only use the limited student version it is not working (The mesh is to complex for the student version so the solution process stops before the file generation command is executed). Also in spacecIaim I can generate the mesh but don not see a way to export a mesh in a suitable file. I appreciate any help!
  
  Best regards
  Michael
- December 5, 2023 at 2:04 pm
  
  peteroznewman
  Subscriber
  
  The following method is a good mesh export method. Unfortunately, the Student license limits apply to Nastran File Export. I suggest you find an Ansys Research license somewhere at your university so you can export the mesh using a full Ansys license.
  In Workbench, create a Modal analysis. In Mechanical, mesh the body. You might need to click on Mesh and set the Element Order to Linear if that is a requirement for actran. Click on Modal in the outline and on the Environment context tab, use the Export Nastran File button to write out the model as a .dat file. You should be able to import that into actran. If there are issues, you can delete some of the initial lines of text in the file above the line that says BEGIN BULK and delete the last line that says ENDDATA.