Mesh Generation Fails

protontim

I have a somewhat complex extrusion that I would like to mesh. However, meshing repeatedly fails (crashes) and I am not sure how to tweak things to improve the chances of it successfully generating a mesh. Is there some documentation that explains how to get the meshing program to converge? Or is there another mesher that I could used to generate the mesh? My model is in STEP format. Thanks.

protontim

I looked around and found gmsh - works great. Mecway read in the mesh it generated just fine. I am up and running.

VMH

Protontim, can you share your step file so we can take a quick look at it? I'm just curious of the type of crashes that you experienced for my information. Thanks

protontim

its just the meshing program that crashes. Mecway does just fine recovering from it. If you still want the step I think I can dig it up.

VMH

I would like to see your step file if you can provide it.

protontim

VMH the step file should be attached. Turns out gmsh is not the panacea I thought it was. Getting bogus results because of mesh sizing.

[Deleted User]

yeah, i was surprised to read your original post saying gmsh worked for you. i tried the program a number of times and don't like it at all. I feel like Netgen is a good solution. I have been using the v6 beta of Netgen. There is a check box that will add midside nodes for you. But if you forget to check it and are in Mecway, you can convert the elements there too. I find it very easy to get a quality mesh from Netgen. If you run into problems though, let me know.

rhoka

it's contain illegal extra surface. this may cause of a problem in meshing.

Victor

Absolutely. A surface like this that's not the boundary of a solid can't be meshed into a solid. This is the type of thing that'll cause strange crashing and failing of the mesher in Mecway. Unfortunately it doesn't show the problem it so it can be hard to diagnose.