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I have a complicated 3d shape which I have created in Autocad that needs to be analyzed in SAP2000. SAP2000 is only capable of reading a 3D solid made out of Polygon Mesh. The present Autocad Versions can only mesh as Polyface meshes. Is there any software that converts 3D solid to Polygon Mesh. I have tried GMSH, SALOME. The meshing is good but again they mesh them as a Polyface and not Polygon.

Nico Schlömer
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Uttarayana
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    What do you mean by "3D Polygon Mesh". A polygon is 2D, right? What's a "Polyface" by your terms? – Nico Schlömer Jan 11 '20 at 12:51
  • It's a way meshing a 3d solid. SAP recognises only these meshes to be solid element. Like it recognises 3d face elements as Shells, Line elements as frames. Look at #2. https://wiki.csiamerica.com/display/sap2000/Import+DWG+into+SAP2000 – Uttarayana Jan 12 '20 at 22:15

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There are several ways to tackle it:

  1. You can try importing the DXF/DWG directly to SAP2000. Sometimes, you have to Explode complicated surfaces in AutoCAD to be importable.
  2. You can also save it in the IGES format (at least, via GMSH/Salome) and import it into SAP2000 then.

This would generally import the model into SAP2000, not the mesh. However, I don't see why that would be a problem since you are already starting from a solid CAD model in AutoCAD.

This page on SAP2000 website describes different ways to import into SAP2000.

Anton Menshov
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  • Thanks for answering Anton. I tried what you said. SAP has a way of decrypting a dxf file into elements it understands. Like lines in dxf as frames, points as Joints, 3D face as Shells & polygon meshes as Solids. AutoCAD meshes 3d solids into polyfaces which sap reads as Shells and not solids. For AutoCAD to create polygon meshes the only way to do it is using 3d mesh command in which you have to manually define all points in the structure, there by defeating the purpose of using AutoCAD. Look at point 2 in this link . wiki.csiamerica.com/display/sap2000/Import+DWG+into+SAP2000 – Uttarayana Jan 12 '20 at 22:13