While preparing an assembly of surface bodies for solution you may find the need to understand and modify the connectivity of the bodies involved. Mechanical offers tools to help you accomplish these tasks. For example, you may:
Confirm whether two surface bodies are topologically connected. This may be especially useful for surface bodies obtained from a mid-surface operation on solids and created artificial gaps in their proximity.
Confirm the connectivity of individual elements in the mesh of the surface bodies.
Mend missing connections between surface bodies by joining their meshes with shared nodes.
To confirm the connectivity of surface bodies it is useful to review the connectivity of their edges using a number of features in both Mechanical and DesignModeler. Edges can be classified depending on the number of faces they topologically connect. For example, the boundary edge of a surface body connects to a single face and is classified as a "single edge", whereas an interior edge connecting two faces of the surface body will be classified as a "double edge". Single and double edges can be distinguished visually using the options of the Edge group on the Display tab. As an alternative, you can Create a Named Selection Object that groups all edges of a given topological connectivity by using the Face Connections criterion.
Edge group options can also be used to review the connectivity of not only the geometry, but also the mesh elements. The same principles applied to the connectivity of a surface body edge apply to element edges.
Mechanical provides Mesh Connections to mend surface body assemblies at locations that are disjointed. With this feature, the meshes of surface bodies that may reside in different parts can be connected by joining their underlying elements via shared nodes. The Mesh Connection does not alter the geometry although the effect can be conveniently previewed and toggled using the option in the Edge group.