Hi,

I'm trying to build a 3d part which resembles a thin membrane with an approximate elliptical surface (xy plane) and with varying thickness in the z direction.  The membrane dimensions are approx 1.5mm x 2.5mm for the minor and major axis of the surface and the thickness varies from 1um to about 20um - flat on one side and undulating on the other.

I am using an imported image of a contour map, each contour line with dimensions in micrometers (attached) and have tried inserting planes along the sketch picture, drawing overbuilt splines on each of these planes with a spline point at each contour line intersection, positioning the spline point in the z direction (z taken as into the page when looking at the contour map), creating an overbuilt boundary surface from these splines, trimming it to the shape of the membrane edge, and then extruding from an outline sketch drawn on front plane up to the trimmed surface boundary.

I have encountered a few problems when inserting this geometry into my finite element modelling package with errors connected to complex geometry, zero geometry, and boolean operators.

Basically I have both the SolidWorks Bible and the Surfacing and Complex Shape Modelling Bible and am looking for ideas/simple ways and parts and features to use to create my 3D part which will allow easy importing of the geometry (as stl, vda or otherwise) into my modelling application.

I'm wondering if anyone has made a similar structure before or has better ideas of how to go about this?

Any help is most welcome!

Thank you in advance

David Mackie

PhD Student

Ultrasound Engineering