Creating the mesh

Basic meshing is a two-stage operation: first you seed the edges of the part instance, and then you mesh the part instance. You select the number of seeds based on the desired element size or on the number of elements that you want along an edge, and Abaqus/CAE places the nodes of the mesh at the seeds whenever possible. For this problem you will create one element on each bar of the hoist.

Context:

Tip: You can display the node and element numbers within the Mesh module by selecting ViewPart Display Options from the main menu bar. Toggle on Show node labels and Show element labels in the Mesh tabbed page of the Part Display Options dialog box that appears.

  1. From the main menu bar, select SeedPart to seed the part instance.

    Note:

    You can gain more control of the resulting mesh by seeding each edge of the part instance individually, but it is not necessary for this example.

    The Global Seeds dialog box appears. The dialog box displays the default element size that Abaqus/CAE will use to seed the part instance. This default element size is based on the size of the part instance. A relatively large seed value will be used so that only one element will be created per region.

  2. In the Global Seeds dialog box, specify an approximate global element size of 1.0, and click OK to create the seeds and to close the dialog box.

  3. From the main menu bar, select MeshPart to mesh the part instance.

  4. From the buttons in the prompt area, click Yes to confirm that you want to mesh the part instance.