Elements of mixed dimension can be defined in PATRAN and I-deas. Ansys Polydata will convert them to Ansys Polyflow PMeshes (as described in PMeshes). Elements of the highest spatial dimension (for example, 3 in 3D) will first be considered; they will determine the connectivity of the mesh and the number of Ansys Polyflow "elements".

Elements of lower spatial dimension will then be considered (typically, face or line elements in 3D). These elements, when properly connected through nodes to elements of higher dimension, will generate pointers to existing faces or segments. The list of these pointers will become a PMesh, which will be listed in the translator output report (with numbers starting at 1 for each spatial dimension).

In order to distinguish between several PMeshes of the same dimension, the material property ID (used for subdomains, as described in Subdomains) is used to collect faces and segments into separate lists. Whenever a candidate for a PMesh is found, the converter checks for the existence of a PMesh of the same dimension with the same material property ID. If this list exists, the element is added to it.

If not, the list is first created and then the element is added to it. PMeshes are numbered in ascending order of the material property indices, so they can be recognized easily.