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CAD Defeaturing
Remove the CAD defeaturing bottleneck so your CAE teams can run more iterations at the same time
Overview
Engineers spend valuable time (up to 30 hours per complex model) manually preparing CAD geometry for CFD analysis: deleting gaps or overlaps, simplifying edges or solving so. Every design change forces them to repeat the entire process
Solution
Bench works like an engineer on your team, performing operations just like a human would, but significantly faster. Bench learns how to handle CAD preparation by applying the knowledge, processes, and logic your team chooses to share with it.
Engineers remain in control, reviewing Bench's work, approving actions, and providing context where needed. For CAD defeaturing, Bench handles the tedious cleanup work automatically, freeing your engineers to focus on analysis and design.
Bench works with your existing tools. No migrations needed. Seamless adoption.
Without Bench
Load CAD
Open the full CAD assembly, isolate the region or parts that need simplification.
Manually delete / edit features
Suppress or delete features (fillets, chamfers, holes, tiny details). If the model is non‑parametric, manually patch geometry (fill holes, extrude over details, smooth surfaces).
Export to CAE and attempt meshing
Export the defeatured model (e.g. STEP), import into the CAE tool, generate a mesh, and run initial checks or trial simulations.
Iterate based on CAE feedback
CAE engineer flags regions that don’t mesh or are overly complex; CAD engineer returns to the model, does further defeaturing, re‑exports, re‑imports, and re‑meshes—often looping several times.
Lock simulation‑ready version
Once the CAE team can mesh and run studies reliably, the defeatured model is accepted as the “simulation‑ready” variant and used for downstream analysis and optimisation.
The most common pain points show up when engineers must defeature scanned, non‑parametric models and when they’re preparing CAD for simulation. In both cases, dense, over‑detailed geometry forces days of manual cleanup before CAE teams can reliably mesh and run studies.
Integrations used
Onshape
Integrate with OnShape for seamless design collaboration and real-time updates across your team.
Solidworks
Utilize Solidworks to enhance your design workflow with powerful simulation and modeling capabilities.
Catia
Use Catia for smart engineering design and product management, helping teams create innovative solutions for today’s industries.
SiemensNX
Integrate SiemensNX to optimize your engineering processes with cutting-edge design tools.
ANSYS
Use ANSYS for simulation solutions that boost innovation and efficiency, letting engineers test their designs virtually before production.
SimScale
Integrate with SimScale’s world-class cloud-native AI and simulation workflows.
How Bench Solves This
Defeaturing Setup
The user provides Bench context whilst simultaneously pointing out visually on the 3D model what needs defeaturing (e.g. "remove everything inside this region" or "we don't care about fillets on this entire model").
This is a highly interactive, immersive, 3D-centred experience where you communicate with Bench as if it were a fellow engineer.
Plan, Approve & Execute
Bench takes all context and annotations into a unified prompt, generates an explainable, tunable plan, and walks you through what it will do.
You can conversationally adjust it (e.g. "keep this fillet", "also remove these holes").
Once approved, Bench immediately runs the workflow in the CAD system, completing defeaturing in seconds to a few minutes depending on complexity. The output is a defeatured model with parametric defeaturing.
Review & Iterate
Bench shows exactly what changed so it can be reviewed, branched or iterated on. As the resulting model is parametric, engineers can continue editing if needed.
Similar Use Cases
CAD Defeaturing
Remove the CAD defeaturing bottleneck so your CAE teams can run more iterations at the same time
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