Parts-Based Meshing

Parts-based meshing (PBM) is a meshing strategy in which you create one or more mesh operations that define workflows for preparing, fixing, and processing geometry. A major benefit of PBM is that every mesh operation you create forms part of a linear and repeatable process.

Mesh operations are the building blocks of PBM. These operations are actions that are performed on input parts and produce either a new part, a new part description, or a modification to a part. Operations can be chained together to create a preparation and meshing process, referred to as a pipeline, that produces a valid volume mesh for the input parts. As you can vary the inputs parts to the pipeline, the PBM strategy is ideally suited to design exploration. The mesh operation pipeline allows you to create custom workflows to suit specific applications. See Mesh Operations.

As part of the PBM pipeline, you can make changes to the mesh settings and refine the mesh using custom controls. All these settings are contained within the pipeline and are repeatable. To further reduce the amount of time you spend on meshing your geometry, you can use local wrapping and local meshing, where only a region in space that you specify is updated locally each time the pipeline executes.

Some mesh operations create parts which act as a placeholder for the results of that particular operation. These parts are known as mesh operation parts. You can use mesh operation parts in other operations. Mesh operation parts contain a reference to the original input parts that were used to define the operation. These parts are known as inherited parts. You can select the original input part directly from the mesh operation part by right-clicking on the inherited part and choosing Select Inherited From. Using this feature, you can select the original input for Part Surfaces, Part Curves, and Part Points.

When you make a change to an input part for an operation or change the settings of an operation, all affected operations become out-of-date. This state typically means that the volume mesh does not accurately represent the pipeline and you must rerun the operations. To make it easier to identify these operations, out-of-date operations are marked with the icon in the object tree. To view the specific parts that are causing an operation to be out-of-date, right click an operation that is so marked and select Show Parts to be Meshed. In the Parts to be Meshed dialog that appears, click Copy selected part to clipboard. You can then use the copied parts to populate other mesh operations or custom mesh controls and so resolve meshing problems with specific parts.