Creating Surface Meshes

You can create a 2D surface mesh using linear or parabolic triangle elements (TR3 or TR6 elements) and quadrangle elements (QD4 or QD8 elements) using the surface mesher.

The surface mesher is well adapted to mesh geometries coming from aerospace or shipbuilding areas.

Before you begin: A finite element model representation must exist.
Related Topics
Accessing the Finite Element Modeling Workbench
Inserting Finite Element Model Representations
Creating 2D Properties
Elements

  1. In the Meshes toolbar, click Surface Mesh .

    The Surface Mesh dialog box appears.

  2. Select the 2D geometry you want to mesh.

  3. If desired, click Modify geometry support to mesh a subset of the geometry you selected in Step 2.

    The Modify Geometry Support dialog box appears.

  4. Select the geometry.

    1. Select one or more faces.

      The selected faces will be excluded from the surface meshing operation.

    2. Toggle on Complementary Mode to instead mesh the faces that you just selected and leave the other faces from the original selection in Step 2 unmeshed.
    3. Click OK

    The Modify Geometry Support dialog box closes.

  5. Define the mesh parameters.

  6. Click OK.

    The surface mesh is created in the specification tree, and you enter the Surface Mesher workshop.

    The Surface Mesher workshop contains a set of tools to:

    To access the Surface Mesher workshop from the Finite Element Modeling workbench, you can:

    • Create a new surface mesh using the Surface Mesh capability.
    • Or edit an existing surface mesh by double-clicking the surface mesh in the specification tree.

    Warning: When you propagate your modification directly from the Surface Mesher workshop (that is to say that you are editing the surface mesh), a message is displayed letting you decide whether or not you want to launch a PLM update. Click No to launch the propagate operation. Do not click Yes in this message, because it is not possible to update a feature that is currently edited.

  7. To exit the Surface Mesh workshop and retrieve the tools of the Finite Element Modeling workbench, click Exit in the Exit toolbar.