Mesh Ribbon Behavior

To get started with SpaceClaim Interactive Meshing ("Meshing"), you must become familiar with the primary meshing tools found on the Mesh ribbon. You will use these tools not only to perform common operations in a typical meshing workflow, but also to affect how Meshing and many of its other tools behave. As you create a mesh and adjust mesh controls to fine-tune that mesh, Meshing is able to respond immediately.

The Update tools are used to enable or disable the meshing tools and automatic updating.


To ...	Use this tool	Description
Toggle meshing tools off and on.	or On/Off	With a model loaded, turn On the Meshing tools to access the interactive meshing tools. Turning On the Meshing tools will adjust the way geometry is treated by downstream systems in Workbench so turn On the Mesh ribbon only if you want to pass the geometry and mesh to downstream systems. The On/Off status of the mesh ribbon is saved with your model. If you delete the mesh data and turn Off the Meshing tools before saving the SpaceClaim file (*.scdoc), all meshing data will be deleted and only geometry will be transferred to downstream systems in Workbench.
Toggle immediate responses in meshing and blocking.	or Play/Pause	Meshing operates in Play mode by default, delivering automatic, live, dynamic mesh updates each time you complete a mesh control, change the geometry, or edit the blocking. If you don't want Meshing to respond immediately to changes and prefer to do several changes prior to updating the mesh, click to Pause. In Play mode, the mesh will update with blocking and geometry changes. In Pause mode, the blocking will continue to update when geometry or blocking changes are made, but the mesh will not be updated until you click Play.

The Settings tools are used to determine global default parameters and to select bodies for meshing.


To ...	Use this Tool	Description
Initialize default values for many of the global mesh options.	or Physics Type	Meshing calculates an initial default size based on the diagonal of the selected body, which is then used internally to determine other size defaults based on the selected Physics Type. See Selecting a Physics Type.
Add bodies or faces to the queue for meshing and activate them so they can respond to your input.	Add/Edit	You will have the opportunity to accept defaults, set your own parameters, or reuse mesh settings in the Mesh Options panel. See Generating the Mesh.
Delete mesh data from selected bodies or faces. Suppress geometry or blocking features.	Delete	You can choose to retain certain settings or clear them along with the mesh data. In certain circumstances, you use the Delete tool to Defeature (suppress) edges or vertices before or after the mesh is calculated. See Using the Delete Tool.

Meshing provides advanced features for creating meshes for your model. Additional steps in your typical meshing workflow such as mesh editing, inspection, and transferring to a solver are described in subsequent pages.