EleGrid

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

MESH/GRID
GENERATION
SOFTWARE
SURVEY

Contact: William L. Anderson

Email: band@elesoft.com

Web Site: http://www.elesoft.com

Availability: Commercial Code

Customer Support: Yes

Approximate Number of Users: 100

Pricing: Elements Professional $4950
Elements Lite, trial and evaluation edition, free Internet download

Platform: Windows

Input:

Parametric representation, 2D spline.
Salients (bumps) are represented by configuration constants.

Engineering Discipline:

Math sciences, Engineering

Elements: Triangle, Quadrilateral

Surface Meshing: Yes

Tri/Tet Method: Octree

EleGrid meshing starts with a structured mesh of rectangular elements in parameter (u,v) space. Where refinement is desired, a bounding rectangle is cut out of this mesh. The bounding rectangle is then subdivided into a finer mesh of rectangular elements. This refinement can be applied recursively. The algorithm is similar to octree, except the bounding rectangle need not be cut along existing element edges. Instead, outer elements are clipped to the inner bounding rectangle. Also, the refinement need not be a power of 2, but can be arbitrary scaled. Any criteria can select regions where refinement is beneficial, including a salient (bump) or the 3D surface metric and curvature properties known implicitly from the parametric representation.

Quad/Hex Method: Indirect

Quadralaterals are easily generated from a parametric representation like a 2D spline. More involved is generating quadrilaterals of approximately equal size. Also, blending recursive salients (bumps) requires clipping and "crack" removal.

Element Sizing Method:

Each salient (bump) feature has a refined mesh that blends with the coarse parent mesh.

Other Features: Refinement

1. Refinement for recursive salient (bump) features.
2. Curve on surface representation.
3. Associated EleGeodesic software computes geodesics. Both point-direction and 2-point geodesics can be computed

Comments:

EleGrid is a software component in Elements Engineering-Scientific Workspace. EleGrid's input is any 2D parametric surface. For example, a 2D spline surface. Generating a mesh from a parametric representation is relatively simple task. Nonetheless, it occurs whenever a spline surface is prepared for rendering and so is an important industrial application. In this case, special features affect the mesh. These include refinement for recursive salients (bumps), curve on surface representation, and geodesic computation.