Hi all,
Does anyone have a workflow for preparing volumetric meshes in 3D Slicer and importing them into finite element software such as ANSYS or FEBio? Been trying so many approaches but they all have dead ends so far. I'm limited to open-source software or student versions of commercial software.
Thanks in advance,
Rachel
If you want to have a multimaterial FE model exportable into Ansys, i would recommend to use BoneMat or MITK-GEM.
You can use the recently added SegmentMesher extension (https://github.com/lassoan/SlicerSegmentMesher 140) to segments (surface meshes or labelmaps) to volumetric meshes that are suitable for FEM analysis. The extension’s packaging is not fully worked out yet, so you may need to install the mesher software (Cleaver2 and/or Tetgen) and set it in the extension manually.
Thank you all for your replies! I tried out several of those options.
A few updates on my progress:
The Segment Mesher feature in 3D Slicer generates a tetrahedral mesh just fine when I use Sample Data (MR HEAD), but not when I use my tiny segments (ear bones). I tried upping the scale parameter but then my computer crashes.
I tried Hypermesh as well, which looked promising but 1) my Intel graphics card did not support it and 2) there were installation errors with the student version even after following all the steps and re-installing.
Also, I found out that the student version of ANSYS only accepts models with under 50 bodies and under 300 faces, and FEBio does not yet have the harmonic response analysis I need. SimScale is working for me so far, since I've been able to create a tet-dominant model and run a harmonic analysis on one bone. I have also been able to upload an assembly with multiple parts, but one of those parts keeps showing up as a shell instead of solid. I'm still working on it, and there may still be quite a bit of troubleshooting ahead.
My current workflow is: 3D Slicer -> export as .stl -> fix/clean mesh in Meshmixer and Meshlab -> import to FreeCAD and convert mesh to shape -> export as .iges file -> import to OnShape -> create assembly -> import to SimScale, which automatically generates standard, tet-dominant, or hex-dominant meshes.
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