Faces

Faces#

This section describes how to work with faces in the Flow360 geometry editor. They are geometric entities representing surfaces that are a part of your model.

Faces in Flow360 can be used for the following things:

  • Define specific regions for mesh refinement

  • Specify boundary conditions

  • Group important geometric features like wings of an airplane or underbody of a car.

Face Selection#

You can select faces in the geometry editor using selection by clicking on the face. You can adjust your selection options on the central toolbar.

Grouping Faces#

Face grouping allows you to organize and manage faces in your geometry. Face grouping is based on metadata associated with each face in your CAD geometry file.

CAD Face Metadata#

CAD geometry files contain metadata associated with each face that Flow360 processes and uses for grouping:

  • name (optional string): The face name as defined in the CAD software. This maps to builtinName in Flow360.

  • color (optional): Face color information from CAD. This maps to _color in Flow360.

  • material (optional): Material information associated with the face.

  • attributes (optional): Key-value pairs completely defined by the designer in CAD software. Common examples include:

    • groupName: e.g., “wing”

    • faceName: e.g., “fuselage”

    • boundaryName: e.g., “tail”

    • comment: Any text comment

    • Any custom key-value pair defined by the designer

Note: CAD face metadata (name, color, material, attributes) is only available for B-rep files (e.g., STEP, IGES, SolidWorks, CATIA). This metadata will not be available when starting from STL or UGrid files.

Flow360-Specific Concepts#

Flow360 provides additional grouping concepts that are not part of the CAD metadata:

  • faceId: An identifier for faces that depends on the file type:

    • For B-rep files (e.g., STEP, IGES, SolidWorks, CATIA): A Flow360-generated identifier that indicates the index and hierarchy of a face within the CAD model structure. For example, faceId = body00002_face00004 means the face belongs to the 4th face of the 2nd body in the CAD model.

    • For discrete files (e.g., STL, UGrid): The actual face name from the file. For example, in an STL file, this would be the name of a solid or face as defined in the file.

  • groupByBodyId: A Flow360 concept used for grouping faces by their body identifier within the CAD model structure.

Using Face Attributes for Grouping#

In the Faces grouping dropdown in the Grouping view, you can select how to group faces based on these attributes. The available grouping options depend on what metadata is present in your CAD file. Common grouping methods include:

  • Grouping by faceId (Flow360-generated)

  • Grouping by groupName (CAD attribute)

  • Grouping by faceName (CAD attribute)

  • Grouping by boundaryName (CAD attribute)

  • Grouping by groupByBodyId (Flow360-generated)

Important: The face grouping setting determines which face groups are available in your geometry and affects the face names used for boundary conditions and surface output settings in your simulation. Make sure to set appropriate attributes in your CAD system before importing the geometry to take full advantage of Flow360’s grouping capabilities.

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