Maximum Surface Deviation (Length)

All curved surfaces are faceted during the meshing process. A facet is a collection of triangles. There is a small distance between the faceted surface and the curved surface, which is called surface deviation. Maximum Surface Deviation is the maximum value of this distance. The following figures show a meshed cylinder in HFSS, the cylinder cross-section, and the maximum surface deviation that occurs near the center of each faceted triangle. When you use an appropriate value for Maximum Surface Deviation (length), the curved surfaces are well-represented to realize the original surface.

The following figures illustrate how the representation of a curved surface changes when different values of maximum surface deviation (length) are used. Smaller values of maximum surface deviation can result in greater number of faceted triangulations, for more accurate approximation of the curved surface. However, increasing the number of triangles causes more CPU time and memory consumption during simulation. For this reason, use the default settings, since they are adequate for most circumstances. In the following figure, the cylinder radius is 0.5 mm, height is 1.5 mm, and the normal deviation angle is kept constant at 45 degrees to illustrate the effects of different maximum surface deviation lengths.