Home
User manual
Assumptions and limitations for importing a model
The following section describes the Thermal Model Exchanger assumptions and limitations when you import a Simcenter 3D model into Thermal Desktop.
Importing temperature constraints
In Simcenter 3D, the Temperature constraint is applied on 2D elements, element faces and edges, whereas in Thermal Desktop, this is applied on nodes by setting the Node type to Boundary and selecting the Override calculations by elements/surfaces check box. The temperature magnitude value is defined in the Initial temp box.

User manual
- Introduction
  Thermal Model Exchanger is an application that allows you to transfer thermal models between Thermal Desktop and Simcenter 3D. The application supports the transfer of the meshes, material and optical properties, and boundary conditions of your model.
- Prerequisites and operating system
  Thermal Model Exchanger requires the installation of AutoCAD with Thermal Desktop. The Thermal Model Exchanger application uses the OpenTD Application Programming Interface (API) to exchange data between Simcenter 3D and Thermal Desktop. Since OpenTD only supports C#, Thermal Model Exchanger can only run on Windows.
- Thermal Model Exchanger user interface
- How to use Thermal Model Exchanger
- Simcenter 3D entities supported by Thermal Model Exchanger
- Thermal Desktop entities supported by Thermal Model Exchanger
- Assumptions and limitations for importing a model
  The following section describes the Thermal Model Exchanger assumptions and limitations when you import a Simcenter 3D model into Thermal Desktop.
  - Importing meshes
    For each mesh in the Simcenter 3D model, Thermal Model Exchanger creates an FE Mesh Importer entity in Thermal Desktop.
  - Importing thermo-physical properties
    Thermal Desktop does not have a concept equivalent to the mesh collector in Simcenter 3D. The thermo-physical properties, which you specify on a mesh collector, are directly assigned to elements or nodes in Thermal Desktop.
  - Importing thermal loads
    Thermal Model Exchanger supports the Heat Load and Heat Flux types of Simcenter 3D Thermal Loads. It converts these entities into the Total Load and Flux types of Thermal Desktop Heat Load, respectively.
  - Importing temperature constraints
    In Simcenter 3D, the Temperature constraint is applied on 2D elements, element faces and edges, whereas in Thermal Desktop, this is applied on nodes by setting the Node type to Boundary and selecting the Override calculations by elements/surfaces check box. The temperature magnitude value is defined in the Initial temp box.
  - Importing thermal couplings
    Thermal Model Exchanger imports Simcenter 3D Thermal Coupling simulation object as Contactors in Thermal Desktop. The application only supports the Thermal Coupling type of Thermal Coupling simulation object. The Perfect Contact and Additional Conductance types are not supported.
  - Importing radiation
    Simcenter 3D Space System Thermal computes radiation using the Radiation simulation object, which contains the All Radiation and Enclosure Radiation types to support radiation calculation between all the surfaces of a model and the surfaces of an enclosure defined by the user respectively. Thermal Model Exchanger only supports the All Radiation type of the Radiation simulation object, it skips any existing Enclosure Radiation type and displays a warning message in the import summary.
  - Importing orbits and space environments
    Simcenter 3D Space Systems Thermal provides several entities for defining orbits and space environments:
  - Importing a solution
    A solution in Simcenter 3D corresponds to a case set in Thermal Desktop. The Simcenter 3D XML file, which is translated by Thermal Model Exchanger, is the thermal solver input file for one solution. The application creates a single case set per XML file.
- Assumptions and limitations for exporting a model
  The following section describes the Thermal Model Exchanger assumptions and limitations when you export a Thermal Desktop model to a Simcenter 3D Space Systems Thermal XML file.

Importing temperature constraints

In Simcenter 3D, the Temperature constraint is applied on 2D elements, element faces and edges, whereas in Thermal Desktop, this is applied on nodes by setting the Node type to Boundary and selecting the Override calculations by elements/surfaces check box. The temperature magnitude value is defined in the Initial temp box.

The following table shows how Thermal Model Exchanger converts the Simcenter 3D Temperature constraint into Thermal Desktop boundary node temperature depending on element and node configurations.


Context	Simcenter 3D elemental temperature location	Thermal Desktop nodal temperature location
When a node is attached to a single edge, Thermal Model Exchanger applies the temperature constraint on the node.
When a node is attached to multiple edges, Thermal Model Exchanger applies the averaged temperature value from the edges on the node.
Within a 2D element or an element face, all the nodes have the same temperature constraint.
When two 2D elements or element faces share nodes and have a different temperature constraints, Thermal Model Exchanger applies the averaged temperature to the shared nodes.

Thermal Model Exchanger supports time-dependent temperature constraints. Temperature constraints with other unsupported dependencies are imported as a constant using the first value of the table. The application displays a warning in the import summary.

When the context requires that Thermal Model Exchanger calculates an average, it ignores all dependencies, and it imports the temperature constraint as a constant using the first value of the table.