Ensuring Conformal Mesh Using Share Topology

The Share tool, on the Workbench ribbon, is used to find common interfaces between bodies based on a tolerance. When shared topology is found, or defined, for a model, the mesher will generate a conformal mesh at the common interface between bodies. See Share Topology for details.

The following notes are helpful when using shared topology to generate a conformal interface mesh between bodies:

• All bodies that share topology should belong to a common component. In this situation, the component represents the part and the bodies represent separate materials or regions of the part (that is, a multibody part).

• Each body could have its own Map/Sweep control with locally-defined source faces to help with generating a hex mesh.

• Share Topology is intended to be the last geometry-editing operation in the model, which creates some limitations. For example, the following operations do not maintain shared topology:

  • Assembly tools
  • Mirror
  • Patterns
  • Split, Pull, Move, etc. operations may work if they don't affect the topology at the shared interfaces, but in general these operations are not supported.
  • Move to another component

  If you plan to modify the geometry after meshing, another approach to getting a conformal mesh may be preferable.

• If you must edit the geometry after meshing, you may be able to use Share prior to mesh generation (to ensure conformal interfaces), and then use Unshare after mesh generation. The following notes are helpful when using Unshare after meshing:

  • The blocking topology would not change. In this case, the shared block faces and mesh would stay conformal.

  • The blocking associations will be updated automatically when geometry is unshared. These associations are based on projection to the closest geometry and may need to be fixed manually. Use the Associate tool to fix these associations.