Meshing is one of the most important steps in performing accurate simulations. However, it is also known for being one of the most time consuming steps. Designers and engineers can spend hours setting up meshes in traditional simulation packages. In OnScale Solve, automated geometry analysis and feature detection algorithms along with the power of cloud computing are used to rapidly generate accurate meshes with no input required from the analyst.   

OnScale Solve users have always been one click away from meshing a model before submitting it for simulation. But now, for many simulations, we have eliminated the need for a meshing step at all, allowing the simulation to start as soon as material and load applications are complete. The previous approach for mechanical models of simultaneously generating five meshes of increasing mesh density has been replaced with a single mesh with optimal refinement for most simulations.

Mesh in no time

With our latest release, OnScale Solve is now faster than ever.  Meshing begins on the cloud as soon as the CAD geometry is opened in Solve and is typically ready for launch as soon as the simulation setup is complete. The type of mesh required by the analysis depends on the physics being solved. For mechanical and thermal analyses solid meshes are generated, while for the Lattice Boltzmann Method fluid solver, a boundary mesh is overlaid on a structured grid. In all cases the mesh generation happens automatically in the background. The new approach tremendously cuts downtime while preparing simulation studies allowing you to focus more on analyzing your results.

Let’s take a look at this printer base model that we simulate with a static mechanical analysis as an example. The simulation materials, constraints and loads are quickly assigned and the simulation is ready to launch immediately. The mesh required for simulation has been generated in the background without user interaction. It can be verified by turning on mesh visualization. You can see that the mesh is automatically refined around small features, curvature and sharp corners where higher stress gradients are expected.

Refine your mesh 

We recognize that analysts may want to make further refinements to the automatically generated mesh in some cases and have included this capability in the Simulator panel. Incremental global refinements can be made on demand with the Coarsen and Refine options to allow you to get the highest precision in results when needed. New meshes for mechanical and thermal analyses can be visualized as they are generated while for fluid simulations, we only give an estimate of the number of cells in the simulation as the boundary mesh that is generated is not representative of the grid refinement level.

In the video below, you can see how easy it is to refine the default mesh.

In most cases, the new automatic feature detection and mesh refinement creates efficient meshes that give accurate results without any user input required. We are continuously working to improve mesh automation in other ways such as including error-based adaptive mesh refinement during the simulation itself that will further reduce the need for user interaction in the meshing process.