In some cases you may not be able to mesh an imported solid part with tetrahedral elements because of very thin triangular elements in the surface mesh or because some sliver faces cannot be meshed with triangles. The following procedure explains how you can use a combination of tools in the Mesh module to mesh the part successfully:
To mesh an imported solid part with tetrahedral elements:
Do one of the following:
Start with a tetrahedral boundary mesh. Go to the Mesh module, and create a tetrahedral boundary mesh on the solid.
Start with a mesh of linear triangles.
Convert the solid part into a shell part by selecting Shape
ShellFrom Solid from the main menu bar.
Go to the Mesh module, and mesh the shell part with linear triangular elements.
Select MeshCreate Mesh Part from the main menu bar to create a new part that is an orphan mesh. For more information, see “Creating an orphan mesh part,” Section 17.18.
Change the displayed object to the orphan part.
Select ToolsEdit Mesh from the main menu bar, and do the following to clean the mesh:
From the Category field, choose Mesh.
From the Method list, select Collapse edges.
Use the Edit Mesh toolset to repair any remaining bad elements or gaps manually. For more information, see “Editing elements,” Section 41.6.
Select ToolsEdit Mesh from the main menu bar, and select Conversion to replace the shell mesh of linear triangles with a solid mesh of linear tetrahedrons. For more information, see “Converting a triangular shell mesh to a solid tetrahedral mesh,” Section 41.7.5.
Go to the Assembly module, and select InstanceReplace to replace the original shell part instance with an instance of the orphan mesh part.
If you want the orphan mesh part to use second-order tetrahedral elements, you can assign a quadratic element type to the orphan mesh part in the Mesh module.