Discussion Forum

I am modeling a heating circuit and I have a very nagging question.

My heating circuit consists of a glass substrate on top of which lies a gold resistive heating circuit(looks all serpentine and what have you).

To model this, I am using Shell, Conductive media. Therefore, my approach is to draw in 2D and extrude into 3D. The question is this: In the Heat Transfer Module Model Library PDF, they extrude the glass and circuit as one object, rather they just draw the resistor over the glass and it seems to embed itself through the thickness of the glass. Would it be best (best for the reason I will shortly acknowledge) to perform the extrusion this way OR would it be better to draw the circuit and then fill in the spaces with other geometric shapes which will then create a composite object that will be the glass? If this is unclear... Maybe, is it better to draw one big glass rectangle and place the resistor in it or draw the resistor and place the glass around it?

The reason I ask this is that I have been trying to spread the physics across different geometric tabs using identity boundary conditions, but there seems to be some topological error due to the geometry of this circuit board. So, which approach would be most beneficial in the proper meshing of the circuit board?

I appreciate any feedback,
Thank you,
Daniel