Using a combination of tools to mesh an imported solid part with tetrahedral elements

In some cases you may not be able to mesh an imported solid part with tetrahedral elements because of very thin triangular elements in the surface mesh or because some sliver faces cannot be meshed with triangles. The following procedure explains how you can use a combination of tools in the Mesh module to mesh the part successfully:

  1. Do one of the following:

    • Start with a tetrahedral boundary mesh. Go to the Mesh module, and create a tetrahedral boundary mesh on the solid.

    • Start with a mesh of linear triangles.

      1. Convert the solid part into a shell part by selecting ShapeShellFrom Solid from the main menu bar.

      2. Go to the Mesh module, and mesh the shell part with linear triangular elements.

  2. Select MeshCreate Mesh Part from the main menu bar to create a new part that is an orphan mesh. For more information, see Creating a mesh part.

  3. Change the displayed object to the orphan mesh.

  4. Select ToolsEdit Mesh from the main menu bar, and do the following to clean the mesh:

    1. From the Category field, choose Mesh.

    2. From the Method list, select Collapse edges.

    Cleaning the mesh will automatically merge nodes on short element edges and remove the collapsed elements. For more information, see Collapsing short edges of a linear orphan mesh.

  5. Use the Edit Mesh toolset to repair any remaining bad elements or gaps manually. For more information, see Editing elements.

  6. Select ToolsEdit Mesh from the main menu bar, and select Conversion to replace the shell mesh of linear triangles with a solid mesh of linear tetrahedrons. For more information, see Converting a triangular shell mesh to a solid tetrahedral mesh.

  7. Go to the Assembly module, and select InstanceReplace to replace the original shell part instance with an instance of the orphan mesh.

  8. If you want the orphan mesh to use second-order tetrahedral elements, you can assign a quadratic element type to the orphan mesh in the Mesh module.