How do detect and repair Tetrahedral meshing problems?
When the solid tetrahedral mesher aborts we know there are no solid elements produced. However, the first elements the solid tetrahetral mesher puts on the geometry are face tria elements. When a tet mesh is successful, these tria elements are deleted automatically. In the case of a failed tet mesh, the tria elements remain. The face meshing will stop at the face that caused problems, and not continue to other remaining faces. At this point the task is to identify the problem area, for closer examination and repair. A useful method to detect the bad area that won’t mesh is to look for element free edges. This identifies locations where element edges are not joined to other elements, and can indicate the location where the mesher had problems. Here are suggested steps. 1. Merge coincident nodes (if any) : Tools/Check/Coincident Nodes (use merge option) 2. Show free edges using View/Select, Model Style: Free Edge You should see several areas where there are elements with free edges. 3. C
