Surface Remesher Guidelines

This section provides guidelines for using the Surface Remesher.

  • It is not necessary for the import surface that the surface remesher acts upon to be closed. However, the surface remesher does not close this surface for you - where free edges occur in the starting surface, an equivalent free edge is present in the remeshed surface.
  • Part curves must be added to the import surface if you wish to maintain sharp edges.
  • Internal feature surfaces such as baffles can be included in the import surface. Convert these surfaces to an interface before surface remeshing.
  • In most cases, the remesher can achieve cell sizes that are close to the specified target size, but in some cases there are cells that deviate from the target size by as much as 40% (higher or lower). The quad mesher that is integrated within the remesher is able to achieve closer matches to the specified target size.
  • In cases where proximity refinement is desired but the starting triangulation is very coarse (for example, STL data), a uniform triangulation in the proximity area may not be achieved. In this case, perform a surface remesh without proximity effects using an intermediate triangulation density, delete the import representation and rerun the surface remesher again with proximity effects included.
  • With the surface curvature option turned off, a uniform surface triangulation that is based on the target surface size is obtained. However, it is recommended that you use surface curvature for most cases as the resultant surface definition is far superior to the definition obtained using uniform triangulation. An example comparison is shown here.




  • When using in-place interfaces in a multi-region case, where the perimeter of the two interface boundaries does not match (leading to remainder boundaries), the imprinting process can fail.

    If this scenario occurs, try one of the following:

    • Remesh one or both boundaries separately to improve the surface triangulation in these areas before attempting to match them. To remesh the boundaries separately, either use surface remeshing with per-region meshing turned on, or use the remesh selected faces option for surface repair.
    • Reverse the order of the interface boundaries. Delete the interface and then select the two boundaries in the opposite order to that used for the original one before making a new interface.
    • When matching a curved surface to a planar one (for example, a sphere touching the side of a box), project part of the curved surface onto the planar surface first. A common area is then formed between the two surfaces that allows an interface to be created.
  • As with all the meshing tools in Simcenter STAR-CCM+, the surface remesher is subject to continual improvement from release to release in order to increase the overall quality of the surface triangulation produced. As such, an increase in the resultant face and vertex count can be seen for the same geometry when run in two different versions.

    A typical example of this situation is seen in highly curved geometries, where a better definition is achieved in the newer version than the old. The increase in face count can sometimes be undesirable (especially if there is a substantial increase). In this instance, relaxing the surface curvature requirement somewhat helps to reduce the overall face count. Depending on the geometry, further adjustments in user-specified sizes can be required in order to reproduce similar face counts (albeit with a higher quality) when comparing the newer version to the old.