Tetra10 (C3D10) meshing for Abaqus

Rahul_P1

Dear everybody,

I have encountered a really frustrating issue with HM for an Abaqus input deck.

I am not able mesh a volume using C3D10 (tet10) elements.
In HM I can set under the the 'edit element' panel which tetra element I want to create. But I dont have the option of C3D10. I only have the option for C3D4 (tet4) elements. (see screen shot)

has anybody an idea?

regards
Ralf

Rahul_P1

HI Ralf,

The edit element panel is used to hand build elements one by one and also combine, split, or modify elements. This should not be used to choose the default element type to be used in one of the tetrameshing options of 3d> tetramesh. The default element types in general are chosen by the 3d > element types panel. (HINT - this is also where one can review the element type used, just hit review and then choose the element type)

We basically need to use a surface mesh and then use this for tetramesh, if this surface mesh is of second order then the tetramesh panel will recognize this and generate second order tetras automatically, and it will be c3d10 as you have already chosen this in the default mesh type as above,

If you by chance are using the volume tetra option, you just need to press o on the keyboard (or go to pereferences > mesh options) and change the default element order to second order, then volume tetra will generate only second order tets. If you then need to use edit element to create a single element somewhere, even that will be automatically updated to c3d10.