Reducing/combining 2D and 3D elements in Hypermesh (mesh imported from Rhino)

Autumn

Hello,

I have imported a 2D mesh into HM from Rhino/Grasshopper and after creating a tetramesh, the resulting number of 3D elements is quite large. I am looking for either:

a) a method of reducing/combining 2D elements, or

b) a method of reducing/combining 3D elements.

I have tried "2D > smooth" and "3D > tetramesh > tetra remesh" and found that while they reduced the number of elements, it was quite minimal. So: is there another method that could be utilized to help bring the total number of 3D elements down? Or perhaps someone has experience with importing meshes/geometry from Rhino/Grasshopper and has any suggestions from that end?

If you have any questions or need anything clarified, please let me know.

Thank you in advance for any tips or advice.

Ben Buchanan

Have you tried to coarsen option for 2D elements?

Is the element size being limited by features in the geometry?  If so, how important is it to capture these features exactly?  You could defeature the geometry so that the mesh doesn't seed to those features if you don't need to capture them.

There may be other things you could do but it is hard to know without knowing what is limiting the element size and what you are trying to do.

For example, if it is a rigid body (or some other mesh where element quality doesn't matter) you could do a very course mesh but if you are looking for accurate stresses in a fillet or other small feature you may need that many elements. In that case you would want to consider modeling only a portion of the geometry instead of coarsening your mesh.