About Automated FEM Methods

Automated FEM is a series of methods that allows you to mesh products and assemblies.

Automated FEM methods greatly accelerate the meshing process, integrate rules-based meshing technology, increase accessibility (no interactive app is required), and handle assemblies (a FEM assembly is created automatically).

The greatest advantage of Automated FEM is the ability to mesh multiple products without the need to load all the geometry and finite element model representations into memory.

This page discusses:

See Also
Creating and Editing Surface Meshes

You can use Automated FEM methods with individual products or assemblies. You can use them to create an assembled finite element model (FEM) representation and to mesh an assembly made of subproducts with 3D shape representations. Automated FEM methods can also run procedures to idealize geometry or to complete other tasks on a product before meshing.

Automated FEM provides general-purpose and specialized methods you can use to prepare an FEM.

General-Purpose Automated FEM Methods

The general-purpose Automated FEM methods use basic techniques to mesh any model geometry.

Standard
Manages solid and surface meshes for multiple bodies using basic parameters of mesh type, element order, size, sag, and thickness (for shell elements). This method can import and mesh point fasteners if they are included in the model.

Specialized Automated FEM Methods

The specialized Automated FEM methods create FEMs intended for a specific purpose.

Lattice
Provides controls to create the FEM for additive manufacturing designs created with the Lattice Design app.
Functional Structure
Provides controls to create the FEM for large steel structures. For more information, see Creating Functional Structure Finite Element Models.