Automatic FEA Model Build Powered by ShapeAI

Machine learning tech isn’t just for self-driving cars or cancer detecting machines.  Some applications are quite modest and can be done as part of a small side project.

Sometimes we all need a break from work.  Periodically focusing on low stress yet rewarding tasks is a good outlet.  I’ve seen this idea take many forms, from a development team’s “Fun Friday” creations to writing articles such as this.  Each person will undoubtedly gravitate toward projects within their own comfort zone, and for me this typically comes back to building finite element models – and specifically automating that process. 

A while back, a colleague and I pondered how we could use Altair’s shapeAI technology to build a finite element model.  We set the goal to only use tools from the HyperWorks installation to fully automate the meshing of a bolted lap joint starting from the CAD geometry.  We imagined meshing as a two-step process: first identify the part and then apply meshing rules.  The second step in this process is a straight-forward automation with procedural programming, so our focus was on replacing human part recognition with shapeAI. A few hours were spent scripting to extract geometric features, train a classifier machine learning model, and creating a GUI, but it worked!  The result is showcased in the video below.

Ironically, not much appears to happen throughout the video once the single button is clicked until the final mesh is generated.  Internally, each part is classified (as a bolt, a plate, or unknown) and the corresponding mesh rules are applied for each class.  This modest video only begins to tell the story of how AI will play an important role in CAE software in the future.  This was a fun project for some of us, but I hope that seeing this motivates everyone to imagine how these ideas can be replicated everywhere.  I encourage you all to reach out to our sales teams or let us know in the comments how we can help supplement your work with shapeAI.