Cube-it

Smart Meshing Tool

Cube-it is an extremely "deep" product with hundreds of commands and features. Most commands include a number of parameters or options developed over the span of more than 25 years by scores of developers. The design goal has always been to produce automatic hexahedral meshes on complex, arbitrary geometries. The goal has not yet been achieved but the Cube-it product is powerful and can produce high-quality meshes for complex problems.

csimsoft is continually looking for opportunities to make the power of Cube-it more accessible and easier to use. With Cube-it 16.1 we have released the new Smart Meshing Tool which combines the power of tolerant imprint and merge, automatic mesh sizing, and automatic mesh scheme selection into an easy to use tool. If this were a movie series, one could consider the Smart Meshing Tool a prequel to ITEM.
 
ITEM was designed to guide users through the complexities of hex meshing in a wizard-type manner. The Smart Meshing Tool is a first step towards more automatic hex,  tet, and mixed meshing. Simply indicate to the Smart Meshing Tool what bodies to mesh, set up the mesh scheme priority desired, indicate whether smoothing is desired, and hit "Run". The tool will use the power of Cube-it's automatic tools to produce a high-quality mesh if at all possible.
 

Using the Smart Meshing Tool

The Smart Meshing Tool is designed to do most of the work of meshing with little to no user intervention.

By default:

  1. All  bodies will be meshed. Activate the pickwidget then click on  bodies to be meshed if fewer than 'all' are desired.
  2. The Scheme Order or priority will be as shown on the left. Change the scheme order by grabbing one of the tiles and sliding it up or down in the list. The lowest priority scheme will be the scheme immediately above (Stop).
    1. Hex   infers an all hex mesh. If every  body in the model is not meshed with hexes only, the next scheme in the list will be attempted.
    2. Mixed   infers as many bodies as possible will be hex meshed, the rest will be tet meshed, and the transitions between hexes and tets will be pyramid elements.
    3. Tet   infers an all tet mesh.
    4. (Stop)   is moved below the user's final scheme priority. For example, if the user only wants an all hex mesh or nothing at all, the user would slide Hex to the top of the list and slide (Stop) below Hex.
  3. The default size is an Auto Factor of 5. Read about Automatic Specification of Intervals. Alternatively, the user may specify an Interval or Size. If the Preview check box is checked, the mesh intervals will be shown as the user slides the Auto Factor slider or enters an interval size or size value.
  4. Smoothing is enabled by default.

To run the tool simply press Run.

Remove any generated mesh or sizing information on the model by pressing Reset Entity.

Access the Mesh Quality Command Panel by pressing the Mesh Quality button. The GUI will switch to the command panel.

Providing Feedback

csimsoft is very interested to get feedback on this new tool. Please contact support with suggestions and success stories.