Extracting Surface Mesh

The Extract Surface Mesh feature allows you to retrieve the surface mesh after the volume mesh has morphed. This feature allows the volume mesh to be reconstructed with the new shape.

One of the most common challenges encountered with morphing cases is that the mesh quality can gradually decrease and sometimes even result in negative volume cells after morphing. This outcome reduces the accuracy and stability of the simulation. The best approach to alleviate these poor quality cells caused by morphing is to re-mesh the geometry. The extract surface mesh feature allows you to retrieve the deformed surface in order to re-mesh the volume mesh.

During the extraction, the surface loses some of its fidelity. The list below shows some of the limitations associated with the extract surface mesh feature:
  • Feature edges are not mapped back to part curves
  • CAD association is not preserved, so vertices cannot be projected to smooth geometry
  • Curves cannot be extracted from the volume mesh
  • The extracted surface mesh is always triangulated

To extract a surface mesh:

  1. In the Parts node, right-click on a part and select Extract Surface Mesh.
  2. In the Extract Surface Mesh dialog, select the target description. The surface mesh is extracted to this description.
    In cases where you want to recover the original mesh, you can use the Re-tessellate action. See Retessellating a Part .
The images below show the body of a solid manta ray placed in a fluid wind tunnel domain. A non-rigid flapping motion has been applied on the wing of the manta ray and the fluid volume mesh around it deforms as the wing moves. After a certain point, as the mesh quality worsens, the fluid volume must be remeshed. To achieve this remesh, you can extract the surface mesh and rerun the automated mesher on the fluid volume. Because the feature updates the part description, no other changes are required within the meshing pipeline.