AREFINE

AREFINE, NA1, NA2, NINC, LEVEL, DEPTH, POST, RETAIN
Refines the mesh around specified areas.

Valid Products: Pro | Premium | Enterprise | PrepPost | Solver | AS add-on

NA1, NA2, NINC

Areas (NA1 to NA2 in increments of NINC) around which the mesh is to be refined. NA2 defaults to NA1, and NINC defaults to 1. If NA1 = ALL, NA2 and NINC are ignored and all selected areas are used for refinement. If NA1 = P, graphical picking is enabled and all remaining command fields are ignored (valid only in the GUI). A component name may also be substituted for NA1 (NA2 and NINC are ignored).

LEVEL

Amount of refinement to be done. Specify the value of LEVEL as an integer from 1 to 5, where a value of 1 provides minimal refinement, and a value of 5 provides maximum refinement (defaults to 1).

DEPTH

Depth of mesh refinement in terms of the number of elements outward from the indicated areas (defaults to 1).

POST

Type of postprocessing to be done after element splitting, in order to improve element quality:

OFF

 — 

No postprocessing will be done.

SMOOTH

 — 

Smoothing will be done. Node locations may change.

CLEAN

 — 

Smoothing and cleanup will be done. Existing elements may be deleted, and node locations may change (default).

RETAIN

Flag indicating whether quadrilateral elements must be retained in the refinement of an all-quadrilateral mesh. (The Mechanical APDL program ignores the RETAIN argument when you are refining anything other than a quadrilateral mesh.)

ON

 — 

The final mesh will be composed entirely of quadrilateral elements, regardless of the element quality (default).

OFF

 — 

The final mesh may include some triangular elements in order to maintain element quality and provide transitioning.

Notes

AREFINE performs local mesh refinement around the specified areas. By default, the indicated elements are split to create new elements with 1/2 the edge length of the original elements (LEVEL = 1).

AREFINE refines all area elements and tetrahedral volume elements that are adjacent to the specified areas. Any volume elements that are adjacent to the specified areas, but are not tetrahedra (for example, hexahedra, wedges, and pyramids), are not refined.

You cannot use mesh refinement on a solid model that contains initial conditions at nodes (IC), coupled nodes (CP family of commands), constraint equations (CE family of commands), or boundary conditions or loads applied directly to any of its nodes or elements. This applies to nodes and elements anywhere in the model, not just in the region where you want to request mesh refinement. See Revising Your Model in the Modeling and Meshing Guide for additional restrictions on mesh refinement.

This command is also valid for rezoning.

Menu Paths

Main Menu>Preprocessor>Meshing>Modify Mesh>Refine At>Areas