Import geometry from STEP file for PDE

Hello,

I was asked to model in MATLAB an electrical filed for a given electrode. The electode has a bit complicated geometry and was designed in AutoCAD and I did get STL and STEP file. The electrode is axially symetrical and, theoretically, I can try solve the problem for a planar (2D) shape but ... the STL file includes a 3D shape. I have read, that it is possible to extract a 2D shape from the STEP file but ... when I try to import the geometry from such a file I get the error:

>> gm = importGeometry("DW2-1-00.00.step")
Error using importGeometry
File "D:\Projekt PT\cad\DW2-1-00.00.step" requires 'stl' or 'STL' extension.

Does anybody have an idea why?

Thanks in advance for help.

Answer 1

[Ritish Sehgal]

I assume that you are using MATLAB R2022a release.

I would like to inform you that importing geometry from a ‘STEP’ file was introduced in the R2022b release.

You can refer to the release notes below:

https://in.mathworks.com/help/pde/release-notes.html

Also, the geometry imported from an STL file can be 3-D or planar, but the geometry imported from a STEP file must be 3-D.

You can refer to the documentation below for more information on the ‘importGeometry’ function:

https://in.mathworks.com/help/pde/ug/pde.pdemodel.importgeometry.html?s_tid=doc_ta

Hope it helps!!

[BLP]

Yes, I am uisng MATLAB2022a release. Thank you very much for help. I will install the newest version and try again.

We will see :)