Surfacing problem filling vehicle body gaps

[jtaylor_94]

Hi,

I'm a final year engineering student undertaking an aerodynamic based project with a vehicle. Using Catia V5 6R2016

In order to create a mesh for the vehicle for CFD analysis I need to create an enclosed body, however the CAD I have has lots of gaps between all the body panels.

So far I have been creating lines between panels and using the fill function by selecting curves along each panel as I cannot think of another way to do this,

Does anyone have any ideas? It would be really appreciated!!

Thanks in advance

 

[MrCATIA]

If the gaps are small, you can lower the Merging Distance when making a Join. .001 inches is probably good for analysis purposes. Healing is another method to close the gaps.

If the gaps are large, then you will probably have to add surfaces to close the openings. Fill is a good tool, but use the adjacent surface edges. For analysis, you don't need the part to be 100% perfect, and you can save some time by eliminating some of the unnecessary features.