Improving the quality of boundary meshes for a bottom-up region

The quality of the boundary mesh on the source and connecting sides is a major factor affecting the quality of a swept mesh. Creating the boundary meshes allows you to improve their quality before you use them to create a bottom-up mesh. For example, to use a combination of unassociated geometric and unassociated element faces to create an acceptable source side, you may need to create the boundary mesh and merge the nodes of the two-dimensional mesh. Likewise, you cannot use a combination of geometric and element faces to create a connecting side, but you can create a single boundary mesh and use a combination of its two-dimensional elements and the element faces of an adjacent three-dimensional mesh to create a connecting side.

You can query a boundary mesh using the Query toolset. In addition, you can check the quality of a boundary mesh using the mesh verify tool. The mesh verify tool allows you to check the quality of all the boundary elements, or you can use the selection filters to check the quality of the boundary elements of only selected faces.

To improve the boundary meshes for a bottom-up region, you can try the following:

  • Modify the mesh controls for the faces of a bottom-up region. For more information, see Assigning mesh controls.

  • Use the geometry diagnostics tool to find small entities such as short edges, small faces, and faces with small face corner angles that can affect the mesh quality. You can create a set containing these small entities. For more information, see Using the geometry diagnostic tools.

  • Use the Geometry Edit toolset to remove redundant edges and vertices. You can also remove a face and stitch over the resulting gap. For more information, see Editing techniques.

  • Use the Virtual Topology toolset to ignore tiny edges or faces. For more information, see What can I do with the Virtual Topology toolset?.

  • Add partitions to reduce the aspect ratio of long, narrow faces or cells. For more information, see The Partition toolset.

  • Use the Edit Mesh toolset to modify the boundary mesh. You can do the following in the Mesh module:

    • Edit nodes

    • Collapse element edges

    • Swap the diagonal of a pair of adjacent triangular elements

    • Split element edges

    For more information, see What can I do with the Edit Mesh toolset?.