Checking for flat triangles
When performing QC on your tri-meshes, you can use the Check Flat Triangles tool (Model > 3D Structure > QC > Check Flat Triangles) to search for flat triangles on your tri-meshes which you can then remove.
A flat triangle is a triangle where the distance from one of the nodes to the opposite side of the triangle is less than a certain distance, known as the node-line distance. Triangles with a small node-line distance are long, pointy slivers which can potentially cause unreliable results.
Important
The algorithms in the Structure Builder work better when the input tri-meshes are smooth. Remove all flat and folded triangles as much as possible. For a visual QC, you can calculate the Mesh Quality of the tri-mesh. Right-click on the object and go to Properties > Default Geometry Properties > Mesh Quality section. The property will give you a measure of the quality. Very pointy and very small triangles, or even flat triangles, should be avoided as they compromise the quality. Use the Remove Flat Triangles tool or the Editing tools for this.
- From the list of available tri-meshes in the model, select the tri-meshes to check by selecting the check boxes or by right-clicking the list and making a selection from the context menu.
- Click OK or Apply to check if there are any flat triangles in the selected tri-meshes.