[Gmsh] [intersection] Detect intersection in volumes

[Germán Martínez Ayuso]

Dear all,

I'm considering to use gmsh as replacement of Ansys mesher (obviating
there is not mesh file type compatibility for Workbench/APDL).

I want to implement an algorithm to introduce spheres (later it will
be any type of volume) in a cubical volume. They should not touch each
other, therefore I need to check if the volume I'm introducing
intersect with any of the volumes I introduced before. I need to work
with volumes/meshes rather than spheres because I need to ensure
future compatibility with other typologies.

Ideally, it will be nice to have a command which checks the
boundaries. I saw there are some commands like Boundary, PointsOf and
CombinedBoundary which seems to retrieve the entities on the
boundaries. But I'm not sure how they work (the documentation does not
explain what happens when there are no boundaries). I tried to use
those commands in the GUI, but I couldn't find them.

Other option, but slower, is to try the intersection command (not
deleting any of the original volumes) and check how many volumes are
after the intersection. If there are more than before, there is an
intersection. But I'm not very happy with this solution. Anyway, I
will need to be able to count the number of volumes before and after,
which I haven't seen anything like in the gmsh documentation.

So, my question is: Is it possible to detect intersections in gmsh
before actually perform the intersections? Is it possible to count the
number of volumes (I guess yes)?

Thank very much. Kind regards,

Germán Martínez-Ayuso
Project Officer,
ASTUTE2020,
Swansea University
german.martinezayuso at swansea.ac.uk
Wales (United Kingdom)

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