Defining Mesh Operations

In Maxwell, mesh operations are optional mesh refinement settings that provide Maxwell with mesh construction guidance. This technique of guiding Maxwell’s mesh construction is referred to as "seeding" the mesh. Seeding is performed using the Mesh commands on the Maxwell 3D or Maxwell 2D menu.

When defining a mesh, you typically assign the mesh operations first (using the Maxwell 3D > Mesh or Maxwell 2D > Mesh commands) and then create the mesh (using the Maxwell 3D or Maxwell 2D menu and selecting Analysis Setup > Generate Mesh command). However, you can also refine the mesh after the initial mesh has been created.

You can instruct Maxwell to refine the length of tetrahedral elements on a surface or within a volume until they are below a certain value (length-based mesh refinement) or you can instruct Maxwell to refine the surface triangle length of all tetrahedral elements on a surface or volume to within a specified value (skin depth-based mesh refinement). In some circumstances, you may also want to create a mesh operation that modifies Maxwell's surface approximation settings for one or more faces. In some circumstances, you may also want to assign a cylindrical gap treatment mesh operation. For Maxwell 2D, when the TAU mesher is selected in the Initial Mesh Settings dialog box, you can define the Skin Depth Layers mesh setting corresponding to the selected edges.

Surface approximation settings are only applied to the initial mesh (the mesh that is generated the first time a design variation is solved). The other types of mesh operations (refining the mesh) can be performed on either the initial mesh or on the most recently generated mesh (the current mesh) if you are updating a previously-created mesh.

Note: Mesh operations at the target design of a mu (permeability) link are ignored.

You can also choose to override automatic choice of which mesher Maxwell uses, by using the Maxwell > Mesh > Initial Mesh Settings command.

Note: There are no restrictions against assigning multiple mesh operations to the same entities. The type of mesh operation can differ between overlapping assignments. For example, length-based refinement could be assigned inside a body, and skin-depth seeding on one or more of its faces. Additionally, overlapping mesh operations of the same type can have differing, or even redundant, parameter values (such as element length) without causing an error condition.

Typically, the operation that dictates the finest local meshing results will control the outcome in overlapping assignment areas or volumes.

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Defining Mesh Operations

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