Creating a 3D volume mesh

Two steps in the 3D Meshing workflow on the 3D Mesh strip (model > 3D Mesh > 3D Meshing) help you to prepare a 3D mesh for an external simulator such as Abaqus.

With the first step, you create a 3D volume mesh. As input to this step you need to have a 3D mesh structural model fully enclosed by five mesh boundary surfaces and with the other surfaces remeshed to be suitable for geomechanics. You create a 3D mesh structural model with the Surface Meshing workflow.

With the second step in the 3D Meshing workflow, Mesh Options, you can specify whether you want sharp transitions of property values across compartment boundaries and/or create a second order mesh (by adding additional nodes to the volume mesh), or you can split surfaces with the aim to model them as 'moving surfaces' during geomechanical simulation (note that each split surface must have surface properties assigned to it with the model > Geomechanics > Surface Properties form to avoid issues during geomechanical simulation).