Setting up the Plastic Part Mesh

You can modify the parameters that control the computational mesh size for the plastic part, and you can manually generate the mesh and view the resulting mesh.

See Also
About the Mesh
Assessing Mesh Quality
  1. From the Setup section of the action bar, click Mesh Part Manager .
    The Mesh Part Manager appears, displaying the average mesh size for the plastic part, each coolant part, and the mold.
  2. Double-click the row for the plastic part.
    The Plastic Mesh Setup dialog box appears.
  3. Modify the Mesh size.

    The mesh size specifies the average size of elements in the mesh. The app calculates the default mesh size based on the overall dimensions of the plastic part, and it generally produces medium quality simulation results. Smaller mesh cells can be necessary for parts with small passages in critical regions, such as gates. For the highest accuracy, specify a mesh size of one-third of the mesh thickness or less.

  4. Specify the number of Boundary layers.

    Boundary layers are thin mesh cells created at the inner and outer surfaces of the part. For high accuracy, specify two or more boundary layers.

  5. Specify the First layer thickness.

    The default thickness of the first boundary layer is one eighth of the average wall thickness, which when combined with the default of two boundary layers creates a boundary layer mesh that is one quarter of the wall thickness on both the inner and outer surfaces of the part. The offset multiplied by the number of boundary layers cannot exceed one half of the wall thickness.

  6. In the Simplify geometry under field, specify the minimum size of topological edges to be retained in the mesh. Smaller geometry will be ignored to simplify the mesh.

    Whenever possible, edges are merged if the topological edges are smaller than the specified value or if the distance between two edges is less than the specified value.

    Note: The default value is set by a predefined formula; use the context menu options to remove the formula and edit the value directly. Simplification is run automatically. Changing the value will result in a new run and might invalidate other edits to the mesh. Deleting the value results in no simplification.

  7. Select Remove logos to remove small features like logos from consideration for the mesh.

    You can customize the Maximum height and Maximum size for these small features.

  8. Click Mesh, then examine the mesh and refine it if necessary.
  9. Click OK.