How do I start to write a program for meshing a gear?

I have to write a code to make a mesh of a gear for FEA, I have seen only programs for 2D mesh and I don't know how to pass to the third dimension.

Does someone know how could I start?

I'm not sure if it is enough to have the domain discretized with a matrix with numbered elements and faces, nodes. I don't know even how to plot the mesh.

Thank you for the help.

[Jan]

Does it matter, what "a mesh of a gear for FEA" means? If so, explain it to increase the number of persons, who can understand, what you are asking for. Start with explaining, what the available inputs are and what you want to get as output.

[mark heimlich]

I mean, if I have the geometric parameters of a gear and my goal is to have a mesh of the gear, how do I accomplish this goal?

I am ignorant on what is a mesh made of. I used them to solve 2D PDE problems but I'm not sure on how could I create one with Matlab.

Available inputs: geometry of gear (e.g. modulus, pitch diameter...) Output: mesh able to be used for finite element analysis

Example: the output should be almost similar to the one of the program Transmission3D by Ansol. The problem is that I don't know what is the output in terms of data.

[Jan]

"I am ignorant on what is a mesh made of." Maybe you are, but to solve the problem this detail is important. What do you want to create exactly? Do you mean the mesh command or a set of 3D coordinates?

"Available inputs: geometry of gear" This is far too vague to allow to reconsider, what you have. Does this mean text files, binary files, multi-dim arrays in Matlab or some limits and criteria to feed an optimization tool?

"the output should be almost similar to the one of the program Transmission3D by Ansol" You cannot expect that the readers download the documentation and search for what you might mean.

Currently I do not get an idea of what you are asking for. Remember that this is a Matlab forum. Please try to narrow down your question until the connection to Matlab gets clear.

Answer 1

[Ravi Kumar]

Check generateMesh() function in PDE Toolbox. If you have the gear geometry in STL format (most CAD tools would let you export the geometry into STL format), then you can use generateMesh() to get FE mesh data. This is a very broad response to your very broad question, like Jan S. has already mentioned, providing more details would get you more specific help.