Do you know all MSC Apex’s FE meshing superpowers?
MSC Apex is this month’s product of the month and we focus on its meshing superpowers. Apart from its powerful CAD clean-up capabilities, 10 out of 10 MSC Apex users applaud its powerful meshing capabilities. Meshing is such a critical step of FEA that being able to do it well is critical and being able to make it almost effortless is what makes MSC Apex an invaluable tool in your FEA toolbox. When creating a surface (2D) mesh, the very first option you have is whether you want to create a surface mesh in the usual way, or if you want to use the Incremental Method. To speed up the meshing process, the Incremental Method allows you to preview individual washer meshes before the actual meshing operation with the option to overwrite global feature mesh settings.
The Incremental Mesh Method provides washer mesh previews and individual mesh editing options.
If the details around holes are not required, holes can also be defeatured (removed) while leaving a mesh seed at its centre for later use (for example to place connections).
Optional automatic seed point creation during hole defeaturing.
MSC Apex has a host of Feature Mesh Settings which the user can set to apply across the whole model or only selected parts. These settings define how MSC Apex should handle the meshing around certain predefined features. Typical settings include the number or size of elements around features, washer widths, the number of layers etc. and can be set differently for different size ranges of those features.
Common feature mesh settings.
Detailed CAD features easily get in the way of a quality mesh, however, that doesn’t need to be the case. Simply suppressing such features allows the mesher to ignore those feature lines while keeping the mesh nodes on the surface. Suppressed features are not deleted and can also be unsuppressed at any stage.
Suppress unneeded feature lines to improve mesh quality
Probably the most underrated meshing feature of MSC Apex is its instantaneous mesh updates when modifying the geometry.
Automatic mesh updates when modifying the geometry
For solid or 3-D meshing two options are available. The first, called Solid Mesh, is the typical tetrahedral mesh, where the solid part is meshed with tet-elements. Naturally, you can choose from first-order (at your own risk) or second-order elements. Another useful, but lesser-known feature of MSC Apex’s solid meshing is its ability to mesh a minimum number of layers for thin sections of a solid. With the Local Layer Adjustment feature you can set the minimum number of layers that should be present through thin sections of a solid, without the need to subdivide the solid or adding mesh seeds.
Automatic through-thickness mesh settings
Another impressive feature of MSC Apex is its 2.5D Meshing tool. This option enables the creation of hexagonal elements, even on complex solid bodies. You may ask why it is called 2.5D meshing? Well, that is due to the method that is used to generate the hexagonal mesh. MSC Apex chooses a face to which it applies a 2D mesh and then extrudes (sweep) that mesh into the 3rd dimension, hence 2.5D. Not all shapes are conducive to 2.5D meshing, however, don’t let that dissuade you. MSC Apex has a visual representation of when a part can automatically be 2.5D meshed or not. When a solid body cannot immediately be 2.5D meshed, it appears as red when you are in the tool, or when the visual toggle is selected. But even when a body is red, the mesher can be assisted by subdividing the part into partitions which are hex meshable. When such partitions appear, they turn green to indicate this.
Red = Not automatically hex meshable; Dotted lines: Partition edges; Green: Automatically hex meshable geometry
And when it’s not clear why a solid can’t be hex-meshed, simply choose the “Diagnose Meshability” option to list possible causes why a logical sweep direction is not clear or possible.
Powerful hex meshable diagnostics tool
To complete the picture, a powerful mesh-quality toolset enables you to find invalid or badly shaped elements as well as their causes. Small geometry features such as short edges, sliver faces or sheet body cracks, which may cause bad-quality elements, can easily be detected and manually or automatically fixed.
Easily identify and fix small geometric features which may cause mesh defects.
The powerful visual element quality indexes also highlight problem areas and make it easy to find all elements with invalid or bad shapes. This enables you to find and resolve problems before running into error messages when starting an analysis.
As you can see, MSC Apex’s meshing capability is truly powerful and gives you the power to represent your part as accurately as you choose. Don’t hesitate to contact us to elaborate on these and many more tools in MSC Apex which will make your life as an FE analyst a breeze.
