Exporting from pro-STAR

Volume meshes may be exported from pro-STAR v4.0x to STAR-CCM+ using the .ccm file format. If you are using an older version of pro-STAR (say v3.2x) then you should use the .ngeom file format instead. The boundary types in STAR-CCM+ will, as far as possible, be inferred from the pro-STAR model for both these formats. Any unrecognized types will be interpreted as walls. Boundaries defined as cyclic in pro-STAR will also be imported as walls in STAR-CCM+, but they can subsequently be used to create a periodic interface.

Only mesh information is contained in the .ngeom file but the .ccm file format supports both mesh and solution data. Any simulation parameters (such as under-relaxation values or choice of differencing schemes etc) or boundary conditions defined in pro-STAR will be ignored. These must be re-defined in STAR-CCM+ once the mesh or meshes have been imported.

To export a mesh from pro-STAR as an .ccm file, the following steps should be done:

Start pro-STAR and resume an existing pro-STAR model or create a new one.

Define and/or merge boundary regions. There will be a one-to-one correspondence between the boundary regions defined in pro-STAR and the boundaries in STAR-CCM+. This is not an essential step as boundaries can be manipulated in STAR-CCM+ after the import, but it may require less effort to have the boundaries properly demarcated before the mesh is imported.

Define and/or merge cell type properties. There will be a one-to-one correspondence between all the cells with the same properties (material label, material index, porosity index, spin index and group index) defined in pro-STAR and the regions in STAR-CCM+. The use of different cell types will have no effect on the resultant region definition unless one of the above properties is used as well.

Enter the GEOM command in the command line to specify the file and scale factor for the export.

The same steps as defined above can be used to export a .ngeom file but with the NGEOM command should be used instead of GEOM.

In both the above instances, the mesh can either be scaled during export, or it may be scaled within STAR-CCM+ after the import has been completed.