Creating a 3D mesh

3D structural models are the recommended input for generating the tetrahedral volume meshes required for geomechanical simulation. With the 3D Mesh strip, you can make them into enclosed volumes by creating mesh boundaries based on the triangulated input surface (tri-meshes). These tri-meshes must be watertight at their intersections. As triangle shapes and sizes are usually not suitable for creating volume meshes for finite element (FE) simulation, they must be re-triangulated (remeshed), for which a dedicated 'Surface Meshing' workflow is provided. These remeshed surfaces can then be turned into tetrahedral volume meshes with the '3D Meshing' workflow.

Finite element analysis can be computationally intensive and time consuming, so it makes sense to create a volume mesh that has a high resolution in regions of particular interest and lower resolution elsewhere. You can achieve this using the Set Element Sizes form, which instructs the remesher where to create larger or smaller triangles while surface meshing and volume meshing.

The 3D Mesh strip (model > 3D Mesh) provides everything you need to take a structural model and create the optimum 3D volume mesh to be used for simulation using finite element analysis. It includes various tools for analyzing the quality of your triangles and meshes and preparing them for the meshing process.