I am designing a trailer for a shepherds hut and want to optimize the material we will need.
I have estimated that the hut will weigh 1,500kg and considered 500kg for the floor and content.
The model was imported from Sketchup and is constructed mainly from mild steel 80x80 box section with 6mm material thickness.
I have run the model but have some really higher than expected stresses. I hope someone could validate this for me to save me running some test simulations.
Simulation Run 4
geometry ‘Shepherd’s Hut STL export (2) - copy - copy’
Thank you
Hi @ndurley, thanks for posting on the forum and welcome to the SimScale Community 
- Although SketchUp is a great tool, I would recommend that you go for an engineering one for CAD modelling. Internally we use OnShape!
- We also recommend users to avoid using STL files for many simulation types (including static), as the files many times contain unwanted features and problematic entities. If you were to go for OnShape instead, you could export your model in other formats
- In respect to this point, you could run some “sanity checks” to validate your model. For instance:
– Are the stresses above 1.6 the materials initial yield limit (Sy)? If so, the stresses are unrealistic
– Do you have a sharp entity which is artificially increasing the stress on a particular point? Although this may be problematic, if you’re far away from the concentration it shouldn’t play a role in the rest of the results
My colleague Ioannis also has a great extra suggestion here: Load balance check in FEA to verify results
Cheers
Igor