Creating and Editing a Partition Hex Mesh

You can create a highly structured hex-dominant mesh in a solid part that is partitioned into multiple volumes.

You can use a sweep or structured meshing technique for all volumes that support it. The app meshes other volumes with tetrahedron elements. You can create a layer of pyramid elements or tie constraints to use at the interfaces between tetrahedron and hexahedron elements. You can create meshes that contain a mixture of first-order hex-dominant elements and second-order tetrahedron elements. Often, this combination provides the most efficient way to achieve accurate simulation results.

Before you begin: A finite element representation must exist. The model must contain 3D geometry.
See Also
About Partition Hex Meshes
Hex-dominant Meshing
Finite Element Model Representations
Updating Meshes
  1. From the Mesh section of the action bar, click Partition Hex Mesh .
    The Partition Hex Mesh dialog box appears.
  2. Select the solid geometry to mesh.
  3. Optional: To refine the support to a subset of volumes, click the eraser icon.
    1. Select Exclude or Keep only to narrow the support to specific volumes.
    2. Select the Volumes to exclude or keep.
    3. Click OK.
    Volumes excluded from the mesh appear translucent and are not colored based on meshability. For more information, see Editing the Display of Mesh Volumes.
  4. Choose the Element order.
    • Select to mesh the 3D geometry with linear elements.
    • Select to mesh the 3D geometry with quadratic elements.
  5. Choose the element shape for volumes that can be hex meshed.
    OptionDescription
    Hex Dominant Generates a mesh of predominantly hexahedral elements.
    Hex Only Generates a mesh of only hexahedral elements.

    Note: The Partition Hex Mesher warns you if the selected element is hex only but the final mesh contains wedges. Columns of wedges can occur when the 2D meshing of a source side fails to generate all quads. If there is a mismatch between the local edge distributions and the final mesh, the warning message indicates the number of geometric edges with mismatches.

  6. Optional: Choose the element shape for volumes that cannot be hex meshed.
    OptionDescription
    Quadratic tet Generates a quadratic tetrahedron mesh.
    Linear tet Generates a linear tetrahedron mesh.
    Linear tet and pyramid Generates a mesh of predominantly linear tetrahedral elements with a small number of pyramidal elements, such that the resulting mesh becomes conforming after combining with the adjacent hex-only or hex-dominant elements.
  7. Specify the global Mesh size.
  8. Optional: Click Initialize from geometry to use the default mesh size.
  9. Optional: To edit the partition hex mesh, click Edit .

    To change the display parameters applied when entering the Partition Hex Mesher, click Editing options and choose one or more options.

    The Partition Hex Mesher opens. This mesher contains actions to:
  10. Click OK to save the mesh specification.
    The local specification is saved in the Mesh Specifications container for the current mesh. The topology constraint is saved in the Topology Specifications container for the current mesh.