2D Surface Meshing

Engineering Solutions has a centralized plate and shell mesh generation tool called the Automeshing Secondary panel. Most of the element creation panels use this module, which supplies as much automated assistance as possible. You can adjust interactively a wide variety of parameters and choose from a suite of algorithms. Engineering Solutions responds with immediate feedback on the effects of the changes, until you are satisfied with the resulting mesh.

There are two approaches to the Automeshing Secondary panel, depending on whether or not you use surfaces as the basis for the operation.

•	If you use surfaces, you may choose from a greater variety of algorithms, have more flexibility in specifying the algorithm parameters and employ the mesh-smoothing operation to improve element quality.

•	If you do not use surfaces, the meshing process is usually faster and uses less memory. Most of the functions are still available and operate in the same way. Furthermore, there are situations in which it is not possible or not desirable to create a surface.

For either method, the module operates the same. You control interactively the number of elements on each edge or side and can determine immediately the nodes that are used to create the mesh. You can adjust the node biasing on each edge to force more elements to be created near one end than near the other, which allows you to see immediately the locations of the new nodes. You can also specify whether the new elements should be quads, trias, or mixed and whether they should be first or second order elements. The created mesh can be previewed, which allows you to evaluate it for element quality before choosing to store it in the database. While you are in the meshing module, you can use any of viewing tools on the visual options menu to simplify the visualization of complex structures in your model.

If you use surfaces, you can specify the mesh generation and visualization options to use on each individual surface. You may choose from several mesh generation algorithms. Mesh smoothing is also available and you may select the algorithm for that operation as well.

The functions of the Automeshing Secondary panel are divided into several subpanels. You can switch freely between the subpanels. The screen display changes to present only the information applicable to the current operation.

•	density subpanel

•	mesh style subpanel

•	biasing subpanel

•	checks subpanel

Each automeshing subpanel has the mesh, reject, smooth, undo, abort and return functions, as well as the local view pop-up menu.