[Gmsh] labels from brep or step files?

[Geordie McBain]

2014-11-15 15:44 GMT+11:00 j s <j.s4403 at gmail.com>:
> I'm experimenting with FreeCAD to generate a mesh with multiple materials
> with the brep (or step) format.  Unfortunately it doesn't seem possible to
> label the surfaces or volumes so gmsh considers them as physical names.  As
> far as I was able to research, this is named Topological Naming, and it is
> currently not available in FreeCAD.
>
> Are there any open source solid modeling tools which support this?

Not that I know of, but this would be a nice feature.

> Does gmsh
> support reading in the names from brep or step files (or any other format)?

Again not that I know of.

One approach which can be used in Gmsh if it's parts of the boundary
that are to be named (e.g. for imposing different boundary conditions
in the subsequent finite element analysis) is to define those parts in
the CAD (e.g. FreeCAD) and export each as a separate surface file
(BRep works fine but STL is possible too).  When they're merged into
Gmsh one at a time, they're kept track of that way.
   This is a fair way short of what you're asking for, but is enough
for some applications.