A CAD/CAE incorporate software framework using a unified representation architecture

•An incorporate CAD/CAE software framework for structural design is proposed.•A unified representation architecture is presented.•Design and analysis information use the same data structure.•CAD model display and CAE post-processor shares the unified mesh data.•The comparison of two case studies from simple to complex is presented.

Currently, there are still some big gaps between the CAD system and CAE system, e.g. the different data structure for model representation, which costs lots of time and effort of engineers in the interaction between these two kinds of systems. In order to bridge these gaps, an incorporate software framework is proposed in this paper. In this framework, the unified representation architecture (URA) is presented that makes CAD and CAE to be an organic entity. The URA contains three components: (1) unified data model (UDD) including unified B-rep, unified feature and unified mesh; (2) unified data management (UDM) consisting of unified interaction, unified data structure, unified Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) history and unified interface; (3) unified display and post-processor (UDP) for both design and performance analysis. The URA facilitates the incorporation by explicitly representing design and analysis information as design features, which maintains their associations through the history chain. Besides the URA, a unified mesh data (UMD) is proposed to unify the mesh of CAD model display and CAE analysis with the purpose of reducing the redundancy of mesh data. The unified mesh data (UMD) is proposed to unify the mesh of CAD model display and CAE analysis, which greatly reduces the redundancy of mesh generation data. Finally, the high efficiency of the proposed framework is demonstrated by engineering examples.