The HeatTK pdf I found easily online is a little confusing as to what
it expects from the geometry (a few figures would have gone a long
way).
If you can live with un-trimmed surfaces, then OpenVSP's file made of
128's should work great. It may be worth trying this for some simple
test cases -- just to find out where the next breakage point is. A
missile body or an Apollo capsule could be done quite readily.
Frankly, given the level of theory used by some components of HeatTK,
you could place some fins 'just touching' the missile body and even
with un-trimmed geometry, your answers would be about the same.
If you want to go all the way to watertight BREP's, then that will
require very significant changes to OpenVSP. If your CAD program is
outputting the wrong entity types (but otherwise satisfactory
geometry) then perhaps you can find a way to convert on that end.
Once you read a OpenVSP IGES/STEP file into a CAD program, we can't be
held responsible for what happens to it.*
A long time ago, I worked with SHABP, VECC, and co. Unless they have
been substantially re-written to arrive at HeatTK, I have serious
questions about how the geometry is processed before analysis (again,
figures in the document would go a long way). Unless HeatTK includes
a miraculous structured surface mesher, something happens along the
way that may not make it worth worrying too much about starting with
perfect BREPs.
This may not be an option, but have you considered using CBAERO from
NASA Ames? It may not be an option, but it is an aero/heating code of
similar theory -- but it was designed from the ground up to work with
an unstructured triangle surface mesh representation of the geometry.
Rob
*As an experiment, try this.... Open an OpenVSP STEP or IGES file in
your favorite CAD program. Then immediately export/save the file as
STEP/IGES. Then, compare the files side-by-side.
Every time I've tried this, the files are _significantly_ different.
Not just trivial boiler plate details -- but fundamentally different
structure, entities, etc. This is because every CAD program converts
the input geometry into its own internal data structures -- and then
it writes them out using its own writer.