Sizing Options

The Sizing options provide greater control over the following properties:

  • Mesh growth (transition) between small and large sizes based on a specified growth rate

  • Curvature based refinement and angles between normals for adjacent mesh elements (curvature-based sizing)

  • Number of mesh elements employed in the gaps between two geometric entities (proximity-based sizing)

By default, Use Adaptive Sizing is set to Yes, unless Physics Preference is set to CFD, Explicit or Nonlinear Mechanical (in which case the default is Capture Curvature set to Yes), or Hydrodynamics (in which case the sizing is Uniform). The option you choose determines which refinement mechanisms are activated, as described in the following sections.

Controls for sizing include Element Size , Growth Rate , Max Size , and Curvature Min Size / Proximity Min Size . The Curvature Min Size/Proximity Min Size and Max Size specifications represent, respectively, the global minimum and global maximum allowable element size. The Element Size specification represents the global maximum allowable size of the elements created by the free surface meshers of the supported methods. The Growth Rate represents the increase in element edge length with each succeeding layer of elements from the edge or face. For example, a growth rate of 1.2 results in a 20% increase in element edge length with each succeeding layer of elements.

Sizing options are applicable to the following mesh methods:

Volume Meshing:

Note:

  • The sizing controls are passed to the Patch Independent Tetrahedron method. That is, the Patch Independent Tetrahedron method does not use the same sizing algorithms; rather, this method interprets the controls and uses internal algorithms to respect the user-defined settings.

  • The General Sweep, Thin Sweep, and Hex Dominant mesh methods use the sizing controls in the creation of the surface mesh, but the volume mesh does not use them.

Surface Meshing:

Note:  For an overview of how using the sizing influences mesh distribution, refer to Understanding the Influence of the Sizing Options.

Sizing topics include: