Hints, Tips and Solutions

Q. Can I export the 3D structures created by VICTORY Cell or VICTORY Process to a format compatible with ANSOFT ANSYS?

A. Yes. SILVACO provides the tool ANSYSExporter which establishes the link between SILVACO software and ANSOFT ANSYS. ANSYSExporter is fully integrated within the SILVACO environment and can be called by means of a deck statement from DeckBuild or used as a stand-alone tool via command line.

This link between SILVACO format and ANSOFT ANSYS is realized via the stereolithography file format (STL) which is a standard format for describing the surface geometry of 3D structures. It is compatible with the tool ICEM CFD Tetra/Prism (ANSYS framework) from ANSOFT and with many other third party CAD tools. Files, containing data in STL format, have an extension ‘.stl’.

The STL format represents structures as a set of closed tessellated surfaces. Each surface outlines parts of the structure consisting of the same material or belonging to the same SDB region. It means that a single 3D structure, composed of several materials or regions, can be represented as a set of STL files (one for each region or material).

The ANSOFT ANSYS tool ICEM CFD Tetra/Prism can load multiple STL files to compose a single 3D structure and can build the unstructured tetrahedral mesh for the full structure, while maintaining a consistent mesh between the parts. This mesh can then be exported into various formats which are suitable for various tools in the ANSYS framework. For more details please consult the ANSYS user manual from ANSOFT.

ANSYSExporter can be used with structures represented by a volume (tetrahedral) mesh and to structures represented by a surface (triangle) mesh enclosing the regions.