Gridgen

MESHING
RESEARCH
CORNER

MESH/GRID
GENERATION
SOFTWARE
SURVEY

Contact: Rick Matus

Email: gridgen@pointwise.com

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

Availability: Commercial Code, Stand-alone Mesh/Grid Generator

Customer Support: Yes

Approximate Number of Users: 250

Pricing: Prices for floating annual licenses, which include technical support, software maintenance,documentation and training start at US$9,500. There are discounts for multiple process licenses. Perpetual (paid up) licenses are available. Academic licenses start at US$2,000.

Platform: Windows, UNIX (SGI, HP, IBM, DEC, and Sun)

The Windows port, already working in beta mode, will be released soon.

Input: Native, IGES

boundary facets, PATRAN Neutral file, VRML and STL formats

Engineering Discipline: CFD

Elements: Triangle, Quadrilateral, Tetrahedra, Hexahedra

Surface Meshing: Yes

Tri/Tet Method: Delaunay

Gridgen's tri/tet methods are both Delaunay. The tri methodology includes smoothing so it can be called "modified Delaunay".

Quad/Hex Method: Structured Grid Generation

Transifnite interpolation (linear interpolants, arc-length based interpolants, parametric,polar, and orthogonal), elliptic refinement with control of grid spacing, smoothness, skewness, and orthogonality, and hyperbolic block structured methods.

Element Sizing Method:

Element size is controlled through user input of a global element size,skewness, and maximum chordal deviation from the underlying CAD surface.

Other Features:

Gridgen has its own geometry modeler so that the trimmed NURBS models that you import from IGES can be supplemented or so that models can be created entirely in Gridgen. Gridgen's prioprietary geometry kernel also allows the gridding of imperfect (sloppy) CAD models - they need not be closed solids and may contain overlaps and gaps.

Comments:

Gridgen is designed for building large meshes with precise control ofgrid clustering and quality. Hyperbolic tangent, geometric progression, and Monotinic Rational Quadratic Spline methods are available for clustering control. Elliptic PDE methods are used to produce high quality grids. Hyperbolic methods are used to quickly grow high quality meshes away from a body.