⁺ScanFE™ Technical Data

• FE Mesh Generation Module ⁺ScanFE
• User Interface
• Mesh generation
• Contact surfaces
• Material Properties
• Output Formats

⁺ScanFE imports masks from ScanIP for mesh generation, contact surface definition and material property assignation as well as to generate rapid prototyping files.

The ⁺ScanFE user interface consists of a range of user definable dockable windows. Project files can be saved and a project history can be examined.

• 3D View - view mesh as solid rendered model, as wireframe mesh, as wireframe mesh superimposed on solid model (hidden line), as point cloud. Parts can be turned on/off and colour intensity reflects underlying greyscale vlaue. Part surfaces and defined contact/stl surfaces can also be viewed.
• 3D Preview Window - subsampled mesh preview with slider frames allowing a sub-portion of the model to be selected for viewing or for re-importing.

• Volumetric Mesh - a mixed hexahedral and tetrahedral element mesh is generated for each defined part/mask with smooth interfaces between parts and minimum target element qualities set by the user (alternatively a pure hexahedral mesh can be generated but boundaries/interfaces are unsmooth).
  Meshes consist of either linear or quadratic (mid-side noded) elements. Adaptive meshing will reduce the mesh density away from boundaries.
  An element quality histogram is also provided.
• Shell Mesh - at all outer surfaces of parts as well as at interfaces a shell element mesh can be defined. This can either be exported on its own or as a layer of elements 'coating' the volumetric mesh.
  

Contact surfaces between any parts in contact can be defined automatically as well as between a part and the surrounding medium and a part and the borders of the bounding box.

Material properties within parts can be assigned based on user defined functions of the greyscale value of the original data.
Density as a function of element parent voxel greyscale (GS) is given by

• FE Output - Finite element input files formats currently supported include Abaqus, Ansys, Comsol, I-deas, LS-Dyna and MSC.Patran Neutral formats. ⁺ScanFE exports can include nodes, hexahedral, tetrahedral and shell elements, material properties, contact surfaces and node sets.
• CFD Output - Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) export to FLUENT.
• RP Output Formats (STL files) - Rapid prototyping models can be output as stl files either ascii or binary. These are exact replicas of the finite element models obtained from sloughing off the external mesh surface of parts.