SOLID MESHING - CREATE 2D AND 3D ELEMENTS FROM SOLID

Altair Forum User

Was hoping to see if there is a way to take a solid model and create a mesh that combines 2d and 3d elements. The 2d elements would be created from portions of the model that would be considered to be less than the desired thickness for 3d elements.

Thanks for any help.

Altair Forum User

You need to slice your solid where you want the 3d mesh to end. Then just mesh what you want. Be careful though. I have found it best to just use a smaller mesh size to accomodate this members in a large solid.

Solid elements only have the 3 translational degrees of freedom at their nodes. So if you but up a shell mesh to a solid mesh you will not transmit any bending. The shell mesh needs to be embedded at least two elements into the solid mesh.

On a related topic if you want to create shell elements on the face of a solid mesh then use Tools -> Faces -> Find Faces. This will create shell elements on the exposed faces of the selected elements. This is useful for modeling composite honeycomb structure.