Create a water tank. The geometry is composed of multiple topological 6-sided blocks, often referred to as a multi-block topology. Each block can be meshed with structured hexahedra.

Goals

In this tutorial, you will learn how to:

• Create multiple rectangles in a grid
• Extrude rectangles to create boxes
• Connect faces to form a multi-volume flow domain

Assumptions

1. You have activated the Caedium Builder add-on or Caedium Professional.
2. You are familiar with Caedium essentials.

Create Rectangles in a Grid

Select the Geometry Tool Palette.

Select the Faces->Rectangle tool. In the Properties Panel, set the Lengths to [0.5 0.25], set the X Repeat to 3, and set the Y Repeat to 2. Press Enter on the keyboard to apply the changes to the Properties Panel.

Drag and drop the Faces->Rectangle tool onto the View Window (view). Select Done to create a rectangle grid (grid group). Rotate the view to see the grid.

All geometry is created at the origin by default.

Extrude Rectangles to Create Boxes

Select the Others->Extrude tool. In the Properties Panel, set the Length to 0.05. Press Enter on the keyboard to apply the changes to the Properties Panel.

Drag and drop the Others->Extrude tool onto the View Window. Double-click sim->Faces in the Select dialog and select Done to create 6 boxes.

Connect Faces

To configure a multi-volume flow domain requires that faces between volumes are connected. However, in this case we want to preserve the faces between the volumes shown below to act as double-sided walls - sometimes referred to as baffles.

Multi-select the two faces (face_11, face_23) as shown above in green. Press and hold the Ctrl key (to add/remove from the selection), right-click on the View Window background and select sim->Faces and click OK.

This is an example of a toggled selection. Having already selected two faces and then selected all faces, the previously selected faces will now be removed from the current selection.

Select the Faces->Connect tool, click Add Connect at the bottom of the Properties Panel and select Done to connect all faces with matching topology and geometry.

To check that you have connected the correct faces, select the Results Tool Palette and select the Selection Filters->Connected Topology tool. In the Properties Panel set Connected to 2.

Drag and drop the Selection Filters->Connected Topology tool onto the View Window. Double-click sim->Faces in the Select dialog and select Done. In the Properties Panel, turn on the Transparent property to see the connected faces.

Notes

The complete geometry created in this tutorial is available as a free download at water-tank-geom.sym.

See the "Transient Water and Air Flow in a Tank" tutorial for a flow simulation using this geometry.