Model Group Directory
If you have never used MSTR Technology GRID3D, start from the beginning of this document. There are three sections that you will use for reference once you become familiar with our system – "Symbolic Parser For CAE Applications", "Building Geometry - Focus on 2D", and "Building Geometry - Focus on 3D." To understand this section, we have assumed you have reviewed those three documents. The remainder of this document is more tutorial in nature.
Chapter 1 of this document is about building geometries in 2D. The chapter is organized as a tutorial followed by a list of rules that you will need to keep in mind (or refer back to) when you want to build your own geometries.
First, the section titled, "Meshing a Geometry," lets you experience the mesher by loading a geometry that has already been built for you. You can skip this section if you wish.
The next section, "Creating a Geometry," walks you through the mechanics of building the simplest geometry – a rectangle. If you have never used MSTR Technology GRID3D before, you should read through this section, understand it, and reproduce the example. Even though the geometry is simple, many concepts that you will need to know are described in this section.
The following section, "Another Geometry," describes the building of a circular geometry. This teaches you how to input curved edges into the MSTR Technology GRID3D.
The sections titled, "About Holes and Faces" and "About Faces inside Faces," walk you through increasingly complex examples, delineating new concepts.
The section titled, "The Right Way and the Wrong Way – A Few More Examples," shows four different examples with commonly made mistakes in describing these geometries. You will find yourself referring back to this section and the following section, "The Rules of Building the Geometry," when the program reports an error in your geometry.
Chapter 2 is about 3D geometry building. 3D geometry building in the MSTR Technology GRID3D is an extension of the 2D geometry builder. For this reason, you should read through chapter 1 which describes 2D geometry building, even if your goal is to build 3D geometries. Keep in mind, that FEWaves only provides automatic meshing for 3D surface geometries and fully 2D geometries. Volume meshes can be created by using our extrusion or importing capabilities. This chapter also includes examples.
Chapter 3 discusses methods of controlling the mesh density. The MSTR Technology GRID3D lets you set overall density parameters and then calculates the mesh density automatically. For most applications, this will generate meshes that are satisfactory. If you need to exercise precise control over the mesh density, you will need to refer to this chapter.
Chapter 4 is about file formats, alternate file formats, and more formats. You will need to refer to this chapter to decide how you want MSTR Technology GRID3D to write out the mesh for you. We are in the process of implementing export features to several popular file formats such as ANSYS Prep-7 and PATRAN Neutral. At the present time, FEWaves only supports SDRC Master Series Universal Datasets 2411 and 2412. Our documentation does not describe any non-native file formats.
Chapter 5 is a brief discussion of how MSTR Technology GRID3D defines elements and nodes. You will need to refer to this chapter to understand how MSTR Technology defines various types of finite elements.
When writing the documentation, it is difficult to decide how much to include and how much to leave out. If you find inadequacies in this documentation, we would appreciate your letting us know about it. Please e-mail us or call us at the numbers listed in the section "How to Contact Us". We are constantly striving to improve the documentation to give you the information you need in the most efficient manner.