Splitting Elements

You can split elements to locally refine a mesh.

Before you begin: Create a surface mesh in the finite element model representation and open it in either the Mesh Editor or the Surface Mesher.
Note: Mesh editing operations that modify the mesh topology (deletes or adds nodes or elements) can result in a loss of the association between the mesh and the geometry. In general, when editing in the Surface Mesher, association is maintained; when editing in the Mesh Editor, association is not maintained.
See Also
Editing Meshes
  1. From the Edit section of the action bar, click Split Elements .
    The Split Elements dialog box appears.
  2. Select a starting and ending element edge from the model.

    Note: You can use the [Shift] key with your selections to select a continuous set of aligned elements instead of stopping after the second element edge selection.

    The element edges along the path connecting the selected edges are highlighted. At each end of the selection set, a node is highlighted to indicate the endpoints that will be used for the split.
  3. If desired, change the selected endpoints or element edges.
  4. Click Split.
    The selected element edges are split at their midpoints, ending at the selected nodes.
  5. Do one of the following:
    • Click Close to save the mesh with the new elements and to end the split elements procedure.
    • Click Cancel to cancel the splitting of elements and to end the procedure.