The surface mesh enhancement process provides automatic surface mesh enhancement for any valid surface mesh (plate/shell models or surfaces of a solid model), one part at a time. It can make surface meshes more consistent, improve the shape of elements and reduce the overall mesh density. Two or three days worth of manually meshing plate/shell models, for example, can be performed with surface mesh enhancement in just minutes.
The surface mesh enhancement is important, because the surface is where high stress areas are usually located and where loads and constraints are applied. An improved surface is also important in the generation of a solid mesh. The solid mesh process creates bricks from the outside in and bases its construction on the exterior surface of a model. The more regular and consistent the surface and surface elements are, the more regular and consistent the brick mesh will be.
The surface mesh enhancement process will use any refinement points that have been defined. See the page Meshing Overview: Meshing CAD Solid Models: Refinement Points for details on refinement points.
The return file from the surface mesh enhancement contains the mesh generated by the mesher. It may also contain yellow Layer 3 lines. The Layer 3 lines occur whenever the surface mesh enhancement divides a quadrilateral into a triangle. This is done to avoid warped elements.
Surface mesh enhancement works from the existing mesh. The new mesh is based on the surface of the existing mesh. If a model has a coarse mesh such that a hole is 10 sided, enhancing the mesh and specifying a smaller mesh size results in a finely meshed 10-sided hole; the enhancement does not know that the hole is theoretically round --- even when enhancing a CAD model. For this reason, the normal procedure when working with curved surfaces is to start with a fine mesh and use the mesh enhancement to generate either a larger mesh size or similar mesh size.
Mesh Generate 3D Mesh command offers many advantages over the surface mesh enhancement. Use the surface mesh enhancement only if the desired mesh cannot be obtained from the regular surface mesher. Perform a Surface Mesh Enhancement:
- If not already set, set the Element Type for the part to be enhanced.
- Select Mesh Mesh Enhance Surface Mesh. The Surface Mesh Enhancement dialog will appear.
- Set the following settings as desired:
- Part #: Enter the number of the part that you want to perform the enhancement on. Note: Do not try to enhance a part that is already solid meshed. The element type can be set to brick, but the part being enhanced must be a surface mesh only. When working with a CAD model, determine if a part is solid meshed by checking the Draw Design Layer Control lines on layer 0 are the solid mesh. Use View Visibility Object Visibility Internal Mesh to see the interior mesh created by the Solid Mesh Engine.
- Absolute Mesh Value: This will be the approximate size of the elements. The size can be entered in the field to the left or can be altered by moving the slider. Note that the default value shown for the mesh size is not necessarily related to the current mesh size.
- Percentage of Default: This will determine the approximate size of the elements as the percentage. The percentage can be entered in the field to the left or can be altered by moving the slider. The default mesh size is one sixth of the cube root of the volume.
- Options button: For more options, press the Options button. (See the page Options Button below.) Note: Set the Options Feature Layer to 15 before enhancing the mesh as only one part at a time, of a CAD assembly, can be enhanced. Matching lines, between the CAD parts, will automatically be placed be on Layer 15 by the CAD surface mesher (Mesh Mesh Generate 3D Mesh).
- Part #: Enter the number of the part that you want to perform the enhancement on.
- Press the Mesh button to enhance the surface mesh. The status box will provide some basic feedback on the progress, or use the Details >> button to see more in-depth feedback from the mesh enhancer.
- The enhanced mesh is not displayed until the dialog is closed. Press the Done button to exit the screen.
- After closing the dialog and reviewing the enhanced mesh, you can return to the previous mesh by opening the Surface Mesh Enhancement dialog and clicking the Undo button. Only one undo can be performed.
The surface mesh enhancement process defaults to accepting a watertight-surface model; that is, a mesh that fully encloses a volume. Such meshes are typically filled with brick elements in a later step using the Solid Mesh command. In addition to a watertight mesh, the model cannot have any internal partitions. Internal partitions are inner surfaces.