Example: Creating a Cell Set to View the Outer Layer of Cells on a Mesh

This example describes how to create and modify a cell set using some of the cell set tools that are available.

You can create an empty cell set and customize the cell set using the modification tools that are available. See Modifying an Existing Cell Set. The following steps describe one example workflow that you can use to visualize the outer layer of cells on a part.
Before creating a cell set, make sure that you have a mesh scene open which contains the meshed parts on which you want to view the outer layer of cells. The outer layer of cells can be a prism layer, or the outer layer of volume meshed cells.
  1. Create an empty cell set. See Creating a New Empty Cell Set.
  2. Right-click the empty cell set node and select Edit Cell Set in Current Scene.
  3. In the Edit Cell Set in-place dialog:
    1. Click Fill.
      In the mesh scene, the entire volume mesh appears selected.
    2. Click Shrink All.
      The selection shrinks away from all part surfaces by one cell depth. Each additional click of Shrink All, shrinks the selection by another cell depth from all part surfaces.
    3. Click Invert.
      The cells that were selected become deselected and the outer layer of cells that were deselected become selected instead.
    4. Click Close.
    The Properties of the [Cell Set 1] node display the number of cells in the cell set that represent the outer layer of cells.
To visualize a section of the cell set, you can create a subset of the cell set (see Using the Subset Option).

For example, to create a geometrical section of the cell set:

  1. Right-click the [Cell Set 1] node and select Subset > Geometric Range.
  2. Define the geometric range in the scene, or specify the coordinates in the Cell Set Geometric Range dialog.
  3. Click Create, then Close.
    The mesh scene updates to show the subset of the cell set, and the Properties of the [Cell Set 1] node update to show the number of cells in the subset.

In this example, an outer layer of prism layer cells that is one cell thick is displayed:



In this example, an outer layer of polyhedral cells that is one cell thick is displayed: