Copyright 2009 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Chapter 3: Shell Meshing

Checking and Editing Mesh

Copyright 2009 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Checking and Editing the Mesh

Checks Toolbar
Mass / Area
Normals
Calc
Element
Load
Distance
Features
Check Summation

Summary
Faces
Edges
Count
Penetration /
Length
Intersection Check

Copyright 2009 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Checking & Editing Mesh: Nodal connection for the 2D mesh

Edges / T-connection Panel

or Tool - Edges

Allow to display free edges to T-connection in the model by creating 1D elements on each one
For free edges you can also equivalence nodes within a specified tolerance

Find Attached Panel

or Tool - Find

Allow you to verify the basic quality of your elements and to the geometric qualities of those
elements

Copyright 2009 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Element quality control: check panel

Check Elements Panel

or Tool - check elems

Allow you to verify the basic quality of your elements and to the geometric qualities of those
elements

Check element settings

Each check can be set to use a
different solvers check method,
or you can set every check to
use the same method. When a
specified solver doesnt support
a certain check at all,
HyperMesh uses its own method
for that check
test the connectivity of a group of
elements
check for duplicate elements

Copyright 2009 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Element quality control: check panel

Chordal deviation is the perpendicular distance
between the actual curve and the
approximating line segments.
Jacobian: This measures the deviation of an element from its ideal or
"perfect" shape, such as a triangles deviation from equilateral.
The Jacobian value ranges from 0.0 to 1.0, where 1.0 represents a
perfectly shaped element.
Length min. :The shortest distance from a corner node
to its opposing edge (or face, in the case of tetra
elements); referred to as height to closest node.

Skew of triangular elements is calculated by finding

the minimum angle between the vector from each node
to the opposing mid-side, and the vector between the
two adjacent mid-sides at each node of the element.

Copyright 2009 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Element quality control: check panel

Aspect Ratio: This is the ratio of the longest edge
of an element to either its shortest edge or the
shortest distance from a corner node to the
opposing edge ("height to closest node").
Taper ratio for the quadrilateral element is
defined by first finding the area of the
triangle formed at each corner grid point.
These areas are then compared to one half
of the area of the quadrilateral.
Warpage: this is the amount by which an element (or in the
case of solid elements, an element face) deviates from being
planar. Since three points define a plane, this check only
applies to quads. The quad is divided into two trias along its
diagonal, and the angle between the trias normals is
measured.

Interior Angles These maximum and minimum values

are evaluated independently for triangles and
quadrilaterals.

Copyright 2009 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Checking & Editing Mesh: Element normal's

Check Normals Panel
Allow you to verify surface or elements normal's orientation and to adjust or reverse them

Copyright 2009 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Automeshing: Remeshing
This option in automesh panel allow you to remesh directly a selected group of elements
switch from surfs to elems

In HM10.0, there are options to remesh elements using the automatic feature detection,
features or the new option lines.

Using any free form line, the automesh

functionality will remesh ensuring that
there is nodal seeding along the selected
line. The nodal seeding can be adjusted as
required

Meshing regions where tight control over

mesh flow or mesh density will benefit
from this functionality. Other use cases
will also include defining weld/adhesive
lines.

Copyright 2009 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Checking & Editing Mesh: 2D page

Smooth panel 2D smooth

Improves quality of selected
elements
Quality index panel 2D quality index
Set criteria for all standard quality
checks
Simultaneously evaluate element
quality
Combine all checks into a single
value called composite quality
index value
Edit nodes and elements
interactively or by automatically
maximizing element quality

Copyright 2009 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Automeshing: The Automesh Panel

Automesh Panel 2D automesh QI optimize
Allow you to mesh surfaces to optimize the quality index (QI) of the elements generated

On the Criteria tab, you can set the target element size,
element criteria, and the method that is used to calculate
the values. An advanced criteria option can be enabled to
give more control over the intermediate QI values, but is
usually not necessary in order to obtain a good quality
mesh

Determines whether nodes generated on a surface edge can be moved

off the surface edge when the algorithm smoothes the mesh

Copyright 2009 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Editing Mesh Tools: 1D, 2D, & 3D pages

Edit element panel 2D edit element

Combine merge 2 or more elements into 1 single element
Split draw a line to cut elements
Cleanup interactively drag nodes to improve element quality
Split panel 2D split
Divide selected elements in a selected manner
Replace panel 2D replace
Merge 2 nodes into 1 node (elements are now connected)
Detach panel 2D detach
Disconnect selected elements from other elements

Copyright 2009 Altair Engineering, Inc. Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved.

Checking & Editing Mesh: Utility Menu

Utility Menu Geom/Mesh page Mesh Tools
Add washer add a ring of quad elements around
a hole in existing mesh

Trim Hole add a hole to existing mesh

Fill Hole remove a hole from existing mesh
Box Trim cut elements passing through a box
shape
Bead add a bead shaped mesh to an existing
mesh