Decoupled parallel meshing in computer aided design

摘要

A method of meshing, for use in a computer-aided design (CAD) or computer-aided engineering (CAE) system, a CAD domain consisting of a single CAD solid, or one of a plurality of CAD parts in an assembly type CAD model, or one of a plurality of sections of a CAD part in an assembly type CAD model, comprises a procedure comprising: carrying out in parallel a plurality of CAD meshing processes so as to generate one or more meshes of the said CAD domain, each CAD meshing process of the said plurality being different from the other meshing processes in the said plurality; determining which of the meshes so generated satisfies one or more preset meshing criteria which are indicative of the quality of the mesh; and selecting for use in a subsequent CAD/CAE process one of the generated meshes which satisfies the said one or more preset meshing criteria. The plurality of meshing processes may comprise at least one primary meshing process which generates mesh elements of a first type and at least one additional meshing process which generates mesh elements of a second type different from the first type, and, if the primary meshing process generates a mesh which satisfies the said one or more preset meshing criteria, and the element type of that mesh is suitable for the domain being meshed, the mesh generated by the primary meshing process is selected for use in the subsequent CAD/CAE process. After meshes have been selected for each section, the meshes of those sections which share an interface with one or more other sections which have the same mesh element type may be merged at that interface, and for any meshes of sections which share an interface with one or more other sections which have a different mesh elements type, constraint conditions may be assigned to one or more selected nodes of elements on each interface between such section meshes, and those sections may be processed unmerged in a CAD/CAE solver, using the constraint conditions to treat those sections as if joined at the said selected node(s) between them.