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Exploring real-time flow visualization from Onshape geometry
eca_elioac
Member Posts: 9 ✭
Hi everyone,
Reposting here — this was originally posted under New Ideas by mistake.
I wanted to share an exploratory personal project (an Onshape extension) I’ve been working on over the past few months.
The idea is to load an Onshape assembly or Part Studio into a Three.js scene via GLTF, allow the user to pick four vertices from the geometry to define an emitter plane, and use that plane to generate particles that interact with the geometry. This gives a quick, qualitative visualization of airflow (or other flow fields, depending on settings).
The goal isn’t CFD accuracy, but fast spatial intuition directly from CAD geometry.
The prototype is still rough and unpolished and has a number of limitations, especially around edge cases. That said, I found the experiment interesting—particularly the idea of using Onshape geometry as a bridge into real-time 3D and visualization workflows (e.g., Three.js, Blender-style tooling).
I’m sharing it here in case others are exploring similar ideas, or have thoughts on approaches, limitations, or potential use cases.
