When ABAQUS/CAE generates a free mesh on a solid with tetrahedral elements, the meshing process consists of two phases:

If your part is complex, generating a free tetrahedral mesh can be time consuming. To save time, you can preview the triangles on the boundary faces after the first phase of the meshing process by toggling on Preview tet boundary mesh in the prompt area before you generate the mesh. If the mesh is acceptable, you can continue meshing the interior of the region. If the mesh is not acceptable or if some regions failed to mesh, ABAQUS/CAE provides a variety of tools for correcting the problems. For more information, see “What can I do with a preview mesh?,” Section 17.9.5.

If you decide to create a triangular preview mesh, ABAQUS/CAE allows you to select faces to mesh even though your final intent is to mesh a solid. However, to select faces, you must use the selection filters in the prompt area to set the type of entity to select to Faces. The Faces option is available only after you toggle on Preview tet boundary mesh. For more information, see “Filtering your selection based on the type of object,” Section 6.3.2.

ABAQUS/CAE displays a preview mesh using white to represent the tetrahedral elements, which is in contrast to the cyan color that ABAQUS/CAE uses to represent the final mesh. When you query the tetrahedral preview mesh, ABAQUS/CAE refers to the elements as Tet boundary elements. In contrast, when you query the final mesh, ABAQUS/CAE refers to the elements as Linear tetrahedral elements or Quadratic tetrahedral elements. The triangles on the boundary faces have no concept of geometric order.

In addition, if you choose to display the preview mesh but the meshing process fails to generate a tetrahedral mesh from the triangles on the exterior faces, ABAQUS/CAE highlights the nodes that it could not insert into the tetrahedral mesh. For more information, see “What should I do if a region fails to mesh?,” Section 17.7.4.