Context: Creating a boundary mesh allows you to preview the first phase of producing the bottom-up mesh. Viewing the boundary elements can help you identify problems that may prevent generating a bottom-up mesh. The boundary mesh functions for geometric faces of bottom-up mesh regions are identical to the tetrahedral boundary mesh capabilities in Abaqus/CAE except that a bottom-up boundary mesh is composed of quadrilateral elements instead of tetrahedral elements (for more information on tetrahedral boundary meshes, see What is a tetrahedral boundary mesh?, and What can I do with a boundary mesh?). To create the boundary mesh for faces of a bottom-up region you must use the top-down region meshing process. When the Mesh defaults color mapping is selected, Abaqus/CAE displays a boundary mesh using white to represent the quadrilateral elements, which is in contrast to the cyan color that Abaqus/CAE uses to represent the final solid mesh. When you query the bottom-up boundary mesh, Abaqus/CAE refers to the two-dimensional boundary elements as Quad boundary elements. In contrast, when you query the final mesh, Abaqus/CAE refers to the three-dimensional solid elements as Linear hexahedral elements. |