> Normal finite elemts does not care. The mesh ist just put on your 3d body that can be an stl or a step or whatever. The FEM only knows the nodes and nothing else. The mesh geometry is completely separate from the CAD file.
I have to disagree somewhat. Engineers rarely run a single simulation, rather they do convergence studies. For some problems, it might be fine to refine while keeping the same geometry (since you have no arbitrarily accurate continuous representation), but not all.
So, yes, you can run toy simulations on any mesh, but I don't think any serious shop will consider a workflow where CAD is completely inaccessible.
There are some ways around it but the cure might be worse than (or rather just as sophisticated as) the poison. Like extrapolating what the geometry might be with high-order elements or fitting NURBs.
I have to disagree somewhat. Engineers rarely run a single simulation, rather they do convergence studies. For some problems, it might be fine to refine while keeping the same geometry (since you have no arbitrarily accurate continuous representation), but not all.
So, yes, you can run toy simulations on any mesh, but I don't think any serious shop will consider a workflow where CAD is completely inaccessible.
There are some ways around it but the cure might be worse than (or rather just as sophisticated as) the poison. Like extrapolating what the geometry might be with high-order elements or fitting NURBs.