LiveLink™ for SOLIDWORKS®

Interface SOLIDWORKS® with COMSOL Multiphysics® via LiveLink™ for SOLIDWORKS®

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Integrated Interface for COMSOL® Simulations and 3D Designs in SOLIDWORKS®

COMSOL Multiphysics® with LiveLink™ for SOLIDWORKS® delivers enhanced connectivity so you can efficiently integrate simulation into your design workflow. SOLIDWORKS® is a premier CAD solution for 3D design and product data management. When used together with multiphysics simulation, it provides a powerful tool for product design, evaluation and optimisation. Using LiveLink™ for SOLIDWORKS®, you can leverage the functionality of COMSOL Multiphysics to better understand how your SOLIDWORKS® design performs in its intended operating environment and accurately evaluate the impact of essentially any physical effects and their interactions.

The One Window Interface Brings COMSOL Multiphysics Into the SolidWorks User Interface

LiveLink™ for SOLIDWORKS® includes a bidirectional interface between the COMSOL Desktop® and SOLIDWORKS®. Through this interface, you can synchronise the CAD design with the COMSOL model, and, in the other direction, you can let your simulation control the design parameters in the SolidWorks file. This enables the optimising of CAD designs through simulations with automated parametric sweeps. Providing an even closer integration, the One Window Interface brings the familiar windows, tools, icons, and menu items from COMSOL Multiphysics and makes them available to set up and run simulations from within the SolidWorks user interface.

Synchronise SOLIDWORKS® 3D CAD and COMSOL Multiphysics® Model Geometries

LiveLink™ for SOLIDWORKS® enables synchronisation between your COMSOL model geometry and the corresponding SolidWorks CAD file. Through synchronisation, physics definitions and boundary conditions remain associated with their respective model domains even when a design has changed. Using the One Window Interface, synchronisation is automatic when a change in the design has been detected during switching between the SolidWorks design environment and the COMSOL simulation environment.

SolidWorks design parameters can be iteratively accessed by COMSOL Multiphysics, facilitating optimisation studies including parametric sweeps to evaluate the effect of properties such as the diameter of a hole or thickness of a component in your design. LiveLink™ for SOLIDWORKS® ensures that design changes are propagated automatically eliminating the need to import and export your designs each time they are updated.

File Handling and Sharing

COMSOL model geometries created from an imported CAD geometry often require some manipulation to reduce the complexity of the mesh and improve the efficiency of the simulation in COMSOL Multiphysics. LiveLink™ for SOLIDWORKS® provides functionality for geometry manipulation also available in the CAD Import Module. Important capabilities include the ability to automatically repair and defeature geometries.

During the import of a CAD geometry, anomalies that exist in a design are automatically detected and removed from the geometry. Healing is also performed to eliminate gaps so that a solid can be formed after the import. Tolerances can be specified for the file import to control the geometry repair process. The process works in very much the same way to defeature an imported design that contains many small, features such as fillets. LiveLink™ for SOLIDWORKS® can detect small features that will produce a dense mesh and decrease the efficiency of your simulations. Features can be removed and repaired manually in SolidWorks or in the COMSOL environment.

Virtual geometry operations are available with COMSOL Multiphysics to provide yet another method to prevent fine design details from creating regions with dense meshes. By using this functionality, you create a virtual geometry for meshing where you exclude selected features of the CAD design. A distinct advantage is that the original curvature of the design is maintained, which may improve simulation accuracy for certain applications such as analysing stresses in structural contact.

SolidWorks is a registered trademark of Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corp. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. For a list of such trademark owners, see http://www.comsol.com/tm. COMSOL AB and its subsidiaries and products are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or supported by these trademark owners.

Streamline Geometries for Simulation

LiveLink™ for SOLIDWORKS® includes functionality to import, export, and even link CAD files with models in COMSOL Multiphysics. There are several options for saving files that facilitate sharing both SolidWorks designs and the associated COMSOL models with your colleagues. LiveLink™ for SOLIDWORKS® features all of the functionality of the CAD Import Module plus enhanced connectivity including the One Window interface embedded within SolidWorks.

CAD files can be imported in the SOLIDWORKS format (.sldprt, .sldasm) and in the widely used IGES, STEP, ACIS®, and Parasolid® formats. In addition, you can import the native files of the Inventor®, and PTC® Creo® Parametric™ CAD systems. The optional File Import for CATIA® V5 provides support for importing the native file format for this system. Imported CAD geometries are converted to Parasolid® geometries using LiveLink™ for SOLIDWORKS® permitting a range of geometry operations that prepare your designs for simulation. Parasolid geometries can be further modified in COMSOL Multiphysics to add larger domains surrounding the original CAD design to simulate external physical effects such as fluid flow. To share modified geometry from COMSOL Multiphysics just export to either the ACIS or Parasolid formats.

Product Features

  • A LiveLink™ interface that synchronises between the SOLIDWORKS® 2019 or 2020 versions of the CAD software and COMSOL Multiphysics when both are running simultaneously
  • Works with an embedded COMSOLDesktop® within the SOLIDWORKS® GUI, or as two separately run programs running simultaneously
  • Synchronise 3D geometric objects (solids, surfaces, curves and points) between SOLIDWORKS® geometries and COMSOLMultiphysics®
  • The synchronised geometry is associative, i.e., the CAD model can be modified in SOLIDWORKS® without the need to re-apply model settings in COMSOLMultiphysics® after re-synchronisation
  • For faster synchronisation of large assemblies, the associativity feature for faces, edges, or vertices can be turned off, if not needed
  • Synchronise material selections and other user-defined selections between the SOLIDWORKS® design and the COMSOL® model
  • Synchronise parameters between the SOLIDWORKS® design and COMSOLMultiphysics® model to modify the COMSOL Multiphysics® geometry, either manually or as controlled by a parametric or optimisation solver
  • Connect to COMSOLServer™ from within SOLIDWORKS® to browse and run apps from within the SOLIDWORKS® interface, including those that use geometry synchronised with SOLIDWORKS®
  • File import of the most popular CAD file formats, see table below
  • Encapsulate geometries to model phenomena in the surrounding domains
  • Export geometry files to the Parasolid® and ACIS® file formats
  • Geometry repair through identification of geometric inconsistencies and knitting surfaces to create solids
  • Defeaturing through the finding and deletion of fillets, short edges, sliver faces, small faces, and spikes
  • Manually deleting faces and healing the resulting gaps through filling (creating a new face) or patching (shrinking or expanding adjacent faces)
  • Detaching faces from a solid object to create a new solid object
  • Cap holes or empty spaces to fill the space and create modelling domains
  • Patch gaps due to missing faces by generating surfaces from the surrounding edges and surfaces
Supported Formats for File Import

Note that not all file formats are supported on all operative systems, for details see System Requirements

File Format
Extension
Version
Import
Export
ACIS®
.sat, .sab, .asat, .asab
up to 2020 1.0 (import), R4, R7, 2016 1.0 (export)
Yes
Yes
AutoCAD®
.dwg
2.5-2020
Yes
No
AutoCAD® DXF™
.dxf
2.5-2020
Yes
No
IGES
.igs, .iges
up to 5.3
Yes
Yes
Inventor® assemblies
.iam
11, 2008-2020
Yes
No
Inventor® parts
.ipt
6-11, 2008-2020
Yes
No
NX™
.prt
up to 1872
Yes
No
Parasolid®
.x_t, .xmt_txt, .x_b, .xmt_bin
up to V32.0
Yes
Yes
PTC® Creo® Parametric™
.prt, .asm
1.0-6.0
Yes
No
PTC® Pro/ENGINEER®
.prt, .asm
16 to Wildfire® 5.0
Yes
No
SOLIDWORKS®
.sldprt, .sldasm
98-2020
Yes
No
STEP
.step
AP203, AP214 (import), AP203 (export)
Yes
Yes

Every business and every simulation need is different.

In order to fully evaluate whether or not the COMSOL Multiphysics® software will meet your requirements, you need to contact us. By talking to one of our sales representatives, you will get personalised recommendations and fully documented examples to help you get the most out of your evaluation and guide you to choose the best license option to suit your needs.

Fill in your contact details and any specific comments or questions, and submit. You will receive a response from a sales representative within one business day.

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(COMSOL®, COMSOL Multiphysics®, Capture the Concept, COMSOL Desktop®) are registered trademarks of COMSOL AB, LiveLink™ is an unregistered trademark of COMSOL AB, ACIS and SAT are registered trademarks of Spatial Corporation. AutoCAD, AutoCAD Inventor and Inventor are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. CATIA is a registered trademark of Dassault Systèmes or its subsidiaries in the US and/or other countries. Microsoft, Excel and Windows are registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Parasolid and Solid Edge are trademarks or registered trademarks of Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and in other countries. SolidWorks is a registered trademark of Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks Corporation. Creo and Pro/ENGINEER are trademarks or registered trademarks of PTC Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and in other countries. MATLAB is a registered trademark of The MathWorks, Inc. Amazon Web Services, the “Powered by Amazon Web Services” logo, Amazon EC2 and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. Mac and Macintosh are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Neither COMSOL nor any COMSOL products are affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or supported by any of these other trademark owners. Other product names, brand names or logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.
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