I have access to laser scans of tunnelsections before and after spraying the tunnel with shotcrete. Hence the first point cloud represents the geometry of the rock surfaces and the other point cloud represents the surfaces of the shotcrete.I would therefore like to use the pointcloud data to build a solid element to import in Abaqus for analysis.
I've tried to use programs such as VRMesh, Meshlab and Autocad and can easily create individual surfaces from the pointclouds, on for the rock surfaces and one for the shotcrete surface. I've so far been unable to join the surfaces to create a solid element. Booth surfaces are higly irregular so when i try to extrude one of the surfaces to create a solid element the geometry will clash into each other.
Any suggestion how to solve this problem?
I think you are going the right way creating two surfaces.
You can try simplifying and checking for errors in each surface: holes, overlaps, etc and make sure each surface is only one entity or group or layer (depending on the software you use).
To create the volume I can think of two options:
1) Select the two surfaces and make a solid.
2) Create two solids and then take de difference of both to create a shell-like solid.
One way to check each surface will be using option two: if a solid can be created and meshed probably the surface is well defined.
Hi Andreas
As stated by Hector, meshers used for preparation of 3D print models is a good bet for what you are doing. Here is another such software http://www.netfabb.com/
/Claes
Thank you all for tips and answer. I managed to generate a solid using the FE-program Comsol. For this first study the bottom surface is plane so i created a a "normal" solid element and then used the surface from irregular top surface to cut and trim the "normal" solid and thus creating the irregular solid.
The test so far includes only a small number of points, around 5000. So I'm not sure whetner or not the program can generate solid elements from larger point clouds. I'm currently looking inte the program Hypermesh but will probably also look into Mimics software.
Was it the 3-matic software that you used?
http://biomedical.materialise.com/3-matic-0
With some help from their support division I have now managed to create solid elements from my point clouds in an easy way using HyperMesh. I run a script that creates tempnodes for each of the scanning points. From the tempnodes i can create two separate surfaces. The solid element is created by using the two surfaces as boundaries for the solid and the mesh can then be exported as an .inp file to be imported in Abaqus.
Andreas,
I have same problems that you used to have. You mentioned that HyperMesh was the solution to create solid elements from your point clouds data, but I don't understand what you've mentioned it. How can you create a script and tempnodes?
- Badges
- Science topic