Map meshing

[xyz20770]

Any good resources on how to perform map meshing? like books, websites. I tried to map mesh a solder ball, but ANSYS always told me that the topology was not right. Thanks.

 

[johnhors]

Generally speaking you can only map mesh very simple geometric shapes. In 2D that means only 3 or 4 sided regions (although some meshers also allow 5 sided regions). In 3D you can only really expect to map mesh pentahedrals and hexahedrals (wedges and bricks). Any other shaped objects will need to be manually split into probably very many simple regions before you can map mesh them, hence the pre-dominance of tet-meshers as most users receive very complex geometry from CAD. (many years ago before tet meshers were available I spent a whole year breaking down a very complex solid into map meshable regions, the same part can now be tet meshed within 5 minutes or less from an initial CAD import!!)

 

[sean01]

hi xyz20770

Can you clarify what you mean by map meshing ? The reason why I ask is that the pre-processor I use (Ansa) has a number of meshing algorithms within it - one of which is Map meshing and I tend to find that it will map mesh pretty much anything - if I find that the mesh is a bit uneven or not perfectly aligned squares - I just cut the surface into different shaped pieces without affecting the topology to get a better result.

If you are trying to map mesh a sphere - you will probably find that the point on the centreline is causing you a problem, depending on your analysis requirement - you might want to create a hoe running through the centreline of the sphere to allow it to map mesh ?

Hope this helps


sean

 

[feadude]

I hope this clarifies mapped meshing:
For solid elements map (regular) meshing is the foundation for brick (hexahedral) elements and free (irregular) meshing is the foundation for tetrahedral elements irregardless of the order (1st or 2nd) of the element.