Representation of a skeleton of a mechanical part

A method for manufacturing a mechanical part designed according to a computer-implemented method for designing the mechanical part, the computer-implemented method comprising:

• obtaining a subset of a finite element mesh (FEM), the subset of the FEM representing the mechanical part;
• and
• determining a representation of a skeleton of the mechanical part based on the subset of the FEM, the skeleton having branches and branch junctions, each branch junction joining respective branches,
• wherein the representation of the skeleton has the same topology as the result of applying a thinning process to the subset,
• wherein the result of applying the thinning process comprises elements of the FEM that each correspond to a respective branch extremity and elements of the FEM that each correspond to a respective branch junction, each element of the FEM that corresponds to a respective branch extremity sharing a face with a respective element of the FEM that corresponds to a branch junction, and
• wherein each operation step of the thinning process is configured to be executed to not yield a local non-manifold surface geometry, such that the thinning process forbids creation of a local non-manifold surface geometry.

A device comprising:

• processing circuitry;
• a non-transitory memory having recorded thereon a computer program comprising instructions for designing a mechanical part that when executed by the processing circuitry causes the processing circuitry to be configured to
• obtain a subset of a finite element mesh (FEM), the subset of the FEM representing the mechanical part;
• and
• determine a representation of a skeleton of the mechanical part based on the subset of the FEM, the representation of the skeleton having branches and branch junctions, each branch junction joining respective branches,
• wherein the representation of the skeleton has the same topology as the result of applying a thinning process to the subset,
• wherein the result of applying the thinning process comprises elements of the FEM that each correspond to a respective branch extremity and elements of the FEM that each correspond to a respective branch junction, each element of the FEM that corresponds to a respective branch extremity sharing a face with a respective element of the FEM that corresponds to a branch junction, and
• wherein each operation step of the thinning process is configured to be executed to not yield a local non-manifold surface geometry, such that the thinning process forbids creation of a local non-manifold surface geometry.