Pyramid Generation

Create pyramids on the outer quad faces of components/collectors containing 3D/volume elements, or on 2D quad elements in which case pyramids are created on the side of the quads’ normals.

Check the quads' normals orientation before generating the pyramids.

The pyramids height can be chosen as the shortest, average, or longest side of the quad base multiplied by the pyramid’s height scale.

All generated pyramids are placed in collector ^pyramids.

Pyramids for hex-core meshes are automatically created when the Hex-core tab is used and the meshing approach is faster and better. However, if you want to create pyramids using this tab on a block of hex elements, the recommended height scale to create pyramids is 0.5, so that the peak nodes from pyramids generated on quad faces at 90 degrees are equivalenced, leaving a very good tria surface to generate the tetrahedral bridge.

Pyramid generation is done by first using the Select Elems option to specify the components containing 3D elements or the quad elements (depending on the option you specified) and then the Generate button is used to perform the pyramids’ generation task. Clicking Close closes the Pyramids tab.

Merge tips of pyramids: In corners of 90 degrees and less, the tip nodes of neighboring pyramids can get very close to each other, which would result in sliver tetra elements during volume meshing. To avoid the sliver elements, the tip noes of certain pyramids are merged. This option is only available for the Use fast generation approach.

The command button Move outer layer of elems from 3D compo is used to move all the elements on the surface of a component containing 3D elements to a new component named ^elems_layer_moved.#. This utility is typically used when we need to shave off layers of element from a previously generated hex-core mesh.