Transcoding and FEA

[Vassilla]

Hi everyone
I usually work with MaxSurf for sailing yacht design. Lately I wanted to start some serius finite element analysis (FEA) for CFD and composites structures calculations, therefore I want to export the designs from maxsurf to other programs. Here my problems

1. Exporting to AutoCAD dxf format 9 times out of ten creates a corrupted file. Any other had this problem? Can be solved natively? My solution is exporting in iges 2d format and re-export from Rhino but I'm losing all the layers info and some accuracy.
2. When exporting to iges and then Rhino it is quite difficult to manipulate the surfaces, using fillet or chamfer on complex trimmed surfaces. Suggestions?
3. When opening the iges with CATIA there are big surprises: trim surfaces not closed anymore, various errors and on. I'm now rebuilding the surfaces interly in CATIA but losing the workability of nurbs surfaces which makes me using MaxSurf. Has someone had the same problem? Any quick solution except remodel the thing? Do you know some usergroup of catia or Ansys for yacht composite construction?
4. Any user of Nastran-Patran software for structural design and FEA analysis?
5. Can you suggest me a strategy to perform a smooth and accurate passage from maxsurf to other modelers for fea analysis and meshing. Which software combination is the best for this pourpose?

thank you for the attention

Vas

[Crag Cay]

MaxSurf version 12 allows direct export and import of native Rhino file formats.

[Danimal]

whats FEA software do you want to use? there are heaps - and some very expensive ones. i have successfully exported a MaxSurf design hull (IGES) in to LUSAS FEA and performed both linear and non linear analyses. You need a very clean model and sometimes it pays to export the hull and rebuild the internal structure you are testing. if you want composite support you will be looking at a $$ commercial package.

many CFD solutions out there - many good free ones if you are a good programmer. solidworks seems to be a good integrated environment for FEA and CFD analysis.

Have you done much FEA before?