Mesh Quality Tools
The mesh quality tool is located in the entity tree window under the quality tab. The Mesh Quality Tool works on meshed entities to analyze mesh quality based on selected metrics. Output from the mesh quality analysis can be visualized using color-coded scales. The mesh quality tool also contains tools to improve mesh quality including smoothing, refinement, node merging, mesh validation, deleting mesh elements, and repositioning nodes.
Figure 1. Mesh Quality Tools
Entity Type - The mesh quality tools can only be applied to mesh entities including volumes, surfaces, hexahedra, quadrilaterals, triangles, or tetrahedra.
Help Button - Opens context specific help for this topic.
Options Button - Clicking on this button will show the Tools>Option menu dialog that allows users to manually enter metric range settings. The settings are persistent between sessions. For a description of quality metrics and default ranges click on one of the following links:
Visual Button - Clicking on this button will open the Mesh/Entity/Quality command panel specific to the entity selected. To visualize elements in the graphics window based on a color-coded quality scale, you must select the entities to visualize and check the "Display Graphical Summary" check box. Once that box is selected, you must also make sure the "Draw Mesh Elements" option is selected. Then press the Apply button
Analyze Button - This button starts the quality processing based on the metrics/filters selected.
Output Window/Tree - The failed elements are shown in the tree under the heading "Poor Elements". For each metric/filter the output will be listed in a tree format with the following nodes.
- The top node on the tree is the name of the metric.
- The next node under is the owning volume or surface when volumes or surfaces are analyzed.
- The next node will be categories or groups of elements. Possible categories are:
- All Above Threshold - represents all mesh elements above the quality threshold upper range
- All Below Threshold - represents all mesh elements below the quality threshold lower range
- Top "n" - This will expand into a list, up to 50 elements long, of the worst offending elements above the upper threshold range.
- Bottom "n" - This will expand into a list, up to 50 elements long, of the worst offending elements below the lower threshold range.
- At the lowest level of the tree are mesh elements.
The mesh elements can be sorted by quality or by numeric order. To change the way items are sorted, click on the headings. The right-click or context menu will show various remedies depending on what is selected. Performing an operation on a parent node will perform the same operation on all of the child nodes.
Mesh Quality Tool Buttons
The buttons on the bottom of the mesh quality tool window are some of the tools you may use to improve mesh quality and include.
- Smooth Button - Opens the Mesh>Entity>Smooth panel
- Refine Button - Opens the Mesh>Entity>Refine panel
- Move Node - Opens the Mesh>Node>Move Node panel
- Merge Node - Opens the Mesh>Node>Merge Node panel
- Delete Mesh Element - Deletes selected mesh entity
- Validate Mesh - Issues the validate mesh command
- Check Coincident Nodes - Issues the check coincident nodes command.
- Refresh Graphics
Right-Click Context Menu Items
- Draw - issues a draw command for any tree node below the metric name.
- Color Code - Issues a 'quality .... draw mesh' command for any tree node below the metric name
- Locate - Issues Locate for volume/surface/hex/quad/tet/tri. The locate command will draw and label selected entities in the graphics window.
- Fly-In - Issues Fly-in for volume/surface/hex/quad/tet/tri. The fly-in command is an animated zoom feature.
- Zoom to - Issues Zoom command for volume/surface/hex/quad/tet/tri
- Rotate About - Issues Rotate About command for volume/surface/hex/quad/tet/tri
- Vis on/off - Issues visibility on/off for volume/surface
- Smooth - Issues generic smooth command for volume/surface/hex/tet
- Smooth Surface Parent - issues a smooth surface command for the surface parents of selected quads and tris.
- Delete Mesh - issues delete mesh propagate command for vol/surf
- Delete Elements - issues delete element command for mesh entities in all categories except 'all'
- Validate mesh - validates selected volume or surface
- Check Coincident Nodes - checks for coincident nodes on volume or surface
- Smooth Panel - brings up the correct smooth panel depending on what's selected
- Smooth Surface Panel - bring up the smooth surface panel with correct surface ids for selected quads and tris
- Merge Node Panel - brings up the panel to merge nodes
- Move Node Panel - brings up the panel to move nodes
- Reset Graphics - resets the display
