Working with geometries

What you’ll learn

• Creating geometries: Create a model using geometry elements.
• Modifying geometries: Use simple operations and boolean operations to modify your model.
• Robust, parametric geometries: Reference entities by name and enable or disable elements for geometric sweeps.

Geometry editing in Quanscient Allsolve is done in the Geometry section. The Geometry elements list is at the top of the Navigation panel (left sidebar). Geometric Entities are in the Common sidebar on the right. For imported CAD with assembly structure, an Assemblies tree shows the hierarchical part names from the file. See Assemblies.

Geometry section overview - geometry elements on the left and geometric entities on the right.

Geometry elements

All shapes, imports and operations are referred to commonly as Geometry elements.

• Import
  • Import file - Import CAD or mesh files
    • .step .iges .brep .gds .msh .nas
• Shapes
  • Sphere
  • Box
  • Cylinder
  • Torus
  • Cone
  • Surface rectangle - Useful for defining port surfaces
• Simple operations
  • Remove - Remove volumes.
  • Translate - Move selected volume or create copies.
  • Rotate - Rotate selected volume around an axis or create rotated copies.
  • Grid - Copy a volume along one or more axes to form a grid.
• Boolean operations (see Boolean operations)
  • Fragment all - Run automatic Fragments operation on all volumes against all.
  • Intersection - Portion common to all selected volumes is kept.
  • Union - Merge all selected volumes/surfaces.
  • Difference - Subtracts volume set 2 from volume set 1.
  • Fragments - Split overlapping volumes into new, non-overlapping volumes.

Building elements

To add elements:

1. If geometry editing is inactive, select Edit model.
2. Select + next to Geometry elements.
3. Select a shape or operation.
4. Adjust element properties/settings.
5. Save your settings.
6. Reorder if necessary and build the elements.
7. Select Confirm model changes to finalize. The model is updated and entity tags are locked.

New elements are added by selecting + next to Geometry elements

Element ordering

Geometry elements work as a stack where each new element is built on top of previous ones. The list ordering goes from top to bottom - the newest element is always at the bottom of the list.

Geometry elements list with a freshly added, unbuilt grid operation

Enabling and disabling elements

Every geometry element has an Enabled setting that controls whether it contributes to the model when built. Turn an element off to exclude it without deleting it — useful for comparing design variants or temporarily removing a feature while you work on the rest of the model.

Geometric sweeps

Enabled also accepts an expression, so you can drive it from a variable. Use variables to switch parts of the geometry on and off parametrically, or sweep over alternative versions of your geometry.

To set up a geometric sweep:

1. Open geometry element settings.

2. Next to the Enabled toggle, select and enter a variable such as water_outside_enabled in the expression field.

   

   

3. Create a Sweep override with values 1 (enabled) and 0 (disabled).

   

4. Create a mesh with the sweep override so that it has an instance for each version of the geometry.

5. Add the mesh and sweep override to your simulation to simulate for each version of the geometry.

Setting up a geometric sweep follows the same steps as sweeping over enabled/disabled materials or physics interactions, except for meshing - you must make a mesh with your override to have a mesh instance for each version of the geometry.

Referencing entities by name

Operations such as Remove, Translate, Rotate, and the boolean operations act on a set of target entities. The recommended way to select targets is by name based on Attribute rule selector logic.

Targets can also be selected directly on the model view or by picking integer tags.

Prefer names over tags for robust geometry

Entity tags are assigned during building and can shift whenever the geometry pipeline changes — adding, removing, or reordering an upstream element renumbers the entities, so an operation that targets a fixed tag may silently act on the wrong volume.

Every entity you build in Allsolve inherits a name attribute from the element that created it. Targeting an operation by name binds it to that element rather than to a volatile tag, so downstream operations keep working when the pipeline changes. It also lets you parameterise the geometry: change a shape’s size or count upstream, and the name-based operations follow automatically.

Translate and rotate: copying

The translate and rotate operations support copying. Enable copying in the operation settings and set the number of copies to create. Each copy is translated or rotated by the specified amount relative to the original.

Original box	Translate with 5 copies	Rotate with 3 copies
It's just a box.	6 boxes in total - 5 copies and the original	The row of boxes is rotated around a point and copied 3 times

Grid

Use the grid operation to create a 2- or 3-dimensional grid from the selected volume/volumes. The grid operation can also copy a volume along a single axis, just like the translate operation.

Boolean operations

Boolean operations combine or subtract volumes (and surfaces in 2D) to build shapes that simple primitives cannot describe on their own. Populate each operation’s volume set by selecting target entities — prefer selecting by name so the operation survives pipeline changes.

Operation	Volume sets	Result
Union	One	Merges all selected volumes/surfaces into a single entity.
Intersection	One	Keeps only the region shared by all selected volumes; discards the rest.
Difference	Two	Subtracts volume set 2 from volume set 1.
Fragments	One	Splits overlapping volumes along their shared boundaries into new, non-overlapping volumes.
Fragment all	—	Runs Fragments on every volume against every other volume in the model.

Fragments and Fragment all do not add or remove material — they only split existing volumes so that neighbouring parts share conforming boundaries, which is required for the mesh to connect adjacent regions.

Implicit Fragment all

There is always an implicit Fragment all as the final operation, so overlapping volumes never reach the mesh. For more detail, see the FAQ entry What is the ‘Fragment all’ operation?.