- [Narrator] This video shows a basic shell meshing
operation carried out by creating mid-surface geometry,
within a solid body.
So go to file new and we'll create a new part.
Click on the front plane,
and right mouse click to create a sketch.
Use the rectangle tool and just drag
an approximate rectangle.
Click okay.
Use smart dimension,
and we're going to size the top edge to eight inches,
then we size the vertical edge to four inches.
Check okay, click on the bottom left-hand point,
and let's set that to zero, zero,
as a datum,
and then we can fix it.
Now close the sketch,
and choose features,
extruded boss/base,
extrude to 0.2 inches, check okay.
Now this geometry is going to form the baseline
for the next few exercises,
so let's save as baseline underscore plate.
Now for the first exercise,
you're going to go to insert surface offset.
I want to pick the bottom surface,
which is the most negative Z.
So I just rotate around,
this is the surface I want,
and I want to offset by 0.1 of an inch,
which is have depth of the parent geometry.
At the moment it's pointing the wrong direction,
so we'll change that and that should move up into
the mid-surface position.
Check okay.
Now to help visualize that,
let's right mouse click and change transparency on
the boss extrude feature.
Now we can see more clearly that surface geometry
has been created properly.
So let's create a new study,
and we'll name this surface underscore plate,
and set it to static analysis.
Check okay.
Now under baseline plate,
at the moment there are two bodies;
solid body, from the boss extrude operation,
and a surface body from the mid-surface
geometry we just created.
Notice the difference between the icons,
one is solid geometry,
one is a special surface geometry definition.
Now we don't want the solid body,
so right mouse click and choose exclude from analysis.
Right mouse click on surface body one,
and apply the material.
We're going to use alloy steel,
so we apply and close.
Right mouse click again,
and edit the definition.
Now, by default, it is a shell mesh property.
So let's set the thickness to 0.2,
set on full preview, if not there already,
now we can see the top and bottom surfaces
are correctly defined.
The bottom is negative Z,
top is positive Z,
the bottom is orange,
the top is green.
We open the offset option,
notice at the moment it's set to zero,
it's just become a middle surface,
which is correct.
We're going to keep the shell type as thin,
and then just check okay.
Right mouse click on mesh,
and create mesh.
We'll leave the mesh density at default,
check okay.
Now if we hover over the geometry,
boss-extrude,
you can see that the shell mesh is correctly in
the mid-surface of that geometric feature.
We're going to pause there,
and, in the next video, we're going to run apply
the loads and bounds conditions,
and run the analysis and check the results.