Fidelity CFD: Automating Geometry Simplification and CAD Preparation

Fidelity CFD: Automating Geometry Simplification and CAD Preparation

One of the biggest challenges in CFD projects is the time spent preparing CAD geometry for meshing and simulation. In many engineering workflows, up to 80% of the total effort can be consumed by manual geometry cleanup, defeaturing, repair, and meshing activities. Fidelity CFD addresses this bottleneck with an automated geometry-preparation workflow that reduces preprocessing time from days to hours.

At the core of this capability is Fidelity CFD AutoSeal, an automated geometry cleanup technology designed to handle imperfect or "dirty" CAD models commonly received from design teams. AutoSeal uses a series of successive octree refinements to analyze the geometry and identify regions that are open, incomplete, or unsuitable for CFD mesh generation. By automatically detecting gaps, missing surfaces, and other geometric inconsistencies below a user-defined threshold, AutoSeal progressively seals these openings and creates a watertight geometry suitable for simulation.

Key Benefits of AutoSeal

• Automatically repairs and seals defective CAD geometry.
• Identifies internal and external cells within complex models.
• Detects and closes small gaps and missing surfaces.
• Produces CFD-ready geometry without extensive manual intervention.
• Reduces geometry preparation and meshing effort from days to hours.
• Improves consistency and repeatability across simulation projects.

Automation Through Python Scripting

Beyond automatic geometry sealing, Fidelity CFD provides a powerful Python scripting environment that enables users to automate the entire CAD preparation workflow. Engineers can develop scripts to perform repetitive preprocessing tasks such as:

• Geometry import and cleanup.
• Defeaturing and simplification.
• Surface and volume meshing.
• Boundary condition assignment.
• Batch model preparation for multiple design variants.

These automation workflows can be executed on local engineering workstations or scaled across High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters, enabling efficient processing of large numbers of models and significantly accelerating simulation turnaround time.

Why It Matters

By combining AutoSeal's automated geometry repair capabilities with Python-based workflow automation, Fidelity CFD allows engineers to spend less time on model preparation and more time evaluating design performance, exploring design alternatives, and making engineering decisions. The result is a faster, more scalable, and highly efficient CFD workflow that supports both individual users and enterprise-level simulation programs.