Creating Boundary Groups

You can select geometry from your model (lines or faces) and a boundary (points on a line or curves on a face) and create a mesh group containing all of the mesh entities (nodes on a line or element edges on a face) that fall on the selected geometry within the selected boundary.

See Also
About Groups
Group Definition Methods
  1. Do either of the following:
    • To create a mesh group in the Groups container, select the Group section of the action bar and click Boundary Group .
    • To create a mesh group under a mesh, right-click the mesh in the tree and select Create Group > Boundary Group.
    The Boundary Group dialog box and the Select toolbox appear.
  2. Optional: Enter a Name for the group.
  3. Select the supports that will be searched for entities to create the mesh group.

    The Select toolbox allows you to choose a selection method for adding supports.

    • Click to select entities manually. This is the default method.
    • Click to select edges.
    • Click to select edges and to propagate edge selection by angle, by tangency, by picking a path direction (arrow), or along a contour (following a free edge of the mesh).
    • Click to select faces.
    • Click to select faces and to propagate face selection to nearby faces.

    The supports are highlighted.
  4. Select the boundaries within which the supports will be searched for entities to create the mesh group.

    The Select toolbox allows you to choose a selection method for adding boundaries.

    • Click to select entities manually. This is the default method.
    • Click to select individual vertices.
    • Click to select edges.
    • Click to select edges and to propagate edge selection by angle, by tangency, by picking a path direction (arrow), or along a contour (following a free edge of the mesh).

    The boundaries are highlighted.

    The supports and boundaries together define the entities that will be added to the group.

    SupportsBoundariesGroup Contains
    LinesPoints on the linesNodes on the lines
    FacesCurves on the facesElement edges on the faces

  5. Click one of the following:
    • OK to save your selections and to close the dialog box. To generate and visualize the group, you must update it.
    • Update to save your selections, close the dialog box, and update the group.
    • Cancel to cancel the modifications and to close the dialog box.
    If you click OK or Update, the group is created and appears in the tree.

Note: When you use mesh groups as supports, the symbol positioning is intended only to indicate support for the feature. The feature symbols might not cover the mesh region as they do for a similar geometry region.