Merging Nodes

You can merge nodes to eliminate narrow gaps or duplicate nodes in a mesh. You can eliminate gaps between two surface meshes or within a single mesh. You can also merge to eliminate duplicate nodes when two meshes share a common edge.

Before you begin: Create a surface mesh in the finite element model representation.
Note: The merge process generally preserves the association between the mesh and the geometry. However, verifying that all nodes are correctly associated with geometric features such as groups is a good practice.
See Also
Editing Meshes
  1. From the Operate section of the action bar, click Meshing Editor , and select a surface mesh from the finite element model representation.
    The Mesh Editing app opens.
  2. From the Edit section of the action bar, click Merge Nodes .
    The Merge Nodes dialog box and the Select toolbox appear.
  3. Choose the extent of the merge operation.

    You can merge nodes from all mesh parts, from only selected parts, or from only the part being edited. To select a subset of the available mesh parts, click +, and use the Mesh Parts Selector dialog box.

  4. Enter a tolerance to indicate the size of the gaps between nodes that you want to close.
  5. Use the methods in the Select toolbox to select the nodes to be considered for merging.

    • Click (default method) to select nodes manually.
    • Click to create a bounding box and to include only the nodes that are within the box.
    • Click to create a bounding box and to include the nodes that are within the box and the nodes that are intersected by the box.
    • Click to select nodes connected by a specified angle.
    • Click to select all nodes.

    When you confirm the selected nodes, the elements within the specified tolerance are modified to close the gap. If the gap is between two surface meshes, only the mesh that you chose in Step 1 is modified.
  6. Do one of the following:
    • Click OK to save your changes and to end the merge nodes procedure.
    • Click Cancel to return the nodes to their previous locations and to end the procedure.