You can use the Extract Edge Features task to identify important geometric features in order to retain their fidelity for your simulation and to improve the integrity of the final surface mesh. Once these important feature are identified, additional operations are applied to imprint them onto the final surface mesh. Size controls can also be applied to them to refine the mesh on those features.
Specify a Name for the specific edge feature object, or use the default name (
edge-group-1
).For the Extraction Method Using field, select the technique to be used for the feature extraction. Choices are Feature Angle, Intersection Loops, or Sharp Angle.
In the list below, you can choose an item in the list, or enter text to filter out the available items in the list before selecting it.
When using the Intersection Loops option, you can choose whether to Select By the object, label, or zone name in the list below.
Select items in the list, or use the Filter Text option in the drop-down to provide text and/or regular expressions in filtering the list (for example, using *, ?, and []). You can also choose the Use Wildcard option in the drop-down to provide wildcard expressions in filtering the list. When you use either
?
or*
in your expression, the matching list item(s) are automatically selected in the list. Use^
,|
, and&
in your expression to indicate boolean operations for NOT, OR, and AND, respectively. See Filtering Lists and Using Wildcards for more information.Depending on the extraction method, you will have to provide the following:
For the Feature Angle extraction method, specify the Feature Angle that you want to use as the threshold for feature extraction. If the angle between two adjacent geometry facet normals is more than this feature angle value, then a feature is extracted at the sharing edge.
For the Intersection Loops extraction method (when selecting objects), specify the Intersected By option that you want to use as the threshold for feature extraction: either individually or collectively. This is a feature located at the intersection of two geometry facets. For collectively, only facets across objects are considered. For individually, all facets are considered.
The following figure also demonstrates the difference between individually versus collectively settings, where individually is indicative only between zones within a single object.
For the Sharp Angle extraction method, specify the Sharp Angle that you want to use as the threshold for feature extraction. If the angle between two adjacent geometry facet normals is more than this sharp angle value, then a feature is extracted at the sharing edge. The default angle is 110 degrees, indicating that these surfaces have a very sharp angle between them. You can define more refined size controls on them and also apply special operations on these objects to force sharing nodes of the final surface mesh onto the geometry.
To force the sharing nodes, the geometry face zones need to be separated at the sharp angle edge. Select face zones per part for that object.
Once your selections are made, click Extract Edge Features and proceed onto the next task.
If you need to make adjustments to any of your settings in this task, click Revert and Edit, make your changes and click Update, or click Cancel to cancel your changes.
When visualizing the results of this workflow task in the graphics window (using the icon), Fluent Meshing displays the edge zones and applies transparency to all visible zones.