The Luminary Cloud platform can import and generate meshes for a wide variety of CAD file formats, but to ensure optimum results we suggest the following best practices:
When possible it is recommended to use a solid modeling platform, rather than a discrete geometry platform (such as STL or OBJ), to generate CAD files, and ensure those are exported in a solid model format. While solid models give exact information about the volumes within a model, discrete geometry formats do not, and require volumes to be reconstructed from surfaces. When the intersection between surfaces is not exact, this can cause problems during import and meshing. Note that Luminary does support discrete geometry import if required for your workflow.
We recommend exporting files in the native format of the CAD platform in which the geometry is created. It is not recommended to try other formats before attempting to import the native format.
To leverage Luminary for meshing and CFD simulation, the CAD volumes of your model should represent the regions where the fluid flow will be simulated. If instead your CAD volumes represent the manufactured parts (i.e., your CAD is of the airplane, and not the simulation domain around the airplane), then you will need to use the available Geometry Modifications, such as adding a far field, to construct the fluid domain.
If there are parts of a model that you do not wish to simulate within Luminary Cloud, please delete them before exporting the CAD file.
If you are building a model out of multiple solids, you should ensure all of those solids have been joined together (uniting, subtracting, intersecting them, etc.) before exporting the CAD file.
if you are uploading an STL file, make sure it is watertight and manifold.
Watertight indicates that all edges have two neighboring triangles. In other words, there are no holes in the surface.
Manifold indicates that every edge is shared by exactly two triangles (no T-junction edges with more than two adjacent faces), there are no overlapping or penetrating elements of the surface, and all triangles have a finite surface area (greater than zero).
If your simulation requires a far-field, it must be added before uploading an STL to Luminary. We do not currently support adding a far-field to uploaded STL files.