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Utilities Menu>Preferences>Meshing>Cartesian

Cartesian
Cartesian mesher
These parameters control the properties the Cartesian grid meshes:

• mesher: algorithm selection:
  • Scan convert: voxelize in 3D with a scan convertion algorithm
  • Zmesher: developed by UGR
• Shape: From geometry or from mesh: shape obtained from the render mesh of the geometry (faster) or from an standard mesh
• Avoid degeneration: only applies to Zmesher, if set it does not create degenerated elements (quadrilateral or line elements).
• grid spacing: Uniform spacing for the whole model, or variable spacing.
• Minimum size: minimum grid spacing allowed.
• Size ratio: ratio between sizes of neighbor cells on each x,y,z direction.

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• Delta radius factor: Randomness of initial radius. Minimum radius = (1-DeltaRadius)*UserRadius; Maximum radius = (1+DeltaRadius)*UserRadius.
• Min. radius factor: Minimum radius Factor. Minimum radius = MinRadius*UserRadius(size of element/2).
• Max. radius factor: Maximum radius Factor. Maximum radius = MaxRadius*UserRadius(size of element/2).

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• Max. iterations: Maximum number of iterations for the choosed algorithm.
• Max. local iterations: Number of iterations for filters.
• Tolerance: Tolerance of distance function to terminate the process.
• Delta position factor: Perturbation of initial position factor. Maximum perturbation = DeltaPosition*UserSize.

• Preprocess with porosity: Initial generation of spheres with porosity.

·Porosity: Value of porosity for preprocess.
·Postprocess: correction of final positions. (Experimental)
·Overlaps: Checked permits overlaping between spheres. If not checked corrects radius of the sphere.
Note: Delta postition and Delta radius: define randomness of generations: if both of them equals 0, the generation will be structured.
Note: Maximum values recomended for Delta position and Delta radius:
2D: delta position: 0.6; delta radius:0.6
3D: delta position: 0.4; delta radius:0.4
Filters

• Filter iterations: Number of global iterations before activate sphere size filter.
• Search iterations: Number of global iterations before activate the search of new overlapings between spheres.
• Search type: Type of search: Spatial search (Tree-based); Delauny remeshing.
• Factor contact: Sphere Neighborhood factor distance. Neighbor if Distance(sphere1,sphere2)<ContactFactor*(sphere1.Radius+sphere2.Radius)
• Factor neighbor: Penalty factor between overlaped spheres (in optimization algorithm must be 1.0)
• Factor facet : Penalty factor between overlaped sphere with a surface (in optimization algorithm must be 1.0).
• Factor overlap: Factor to eliminate sphere with overlaps. Delete sphere if maximum Overlap>OverlapFactor*Sphere radius

Utilities Menu>Preferences>Meshing>Sphere circle>Granular
Granular
Granulay is a sphere or circle mesher included as an optional plugin.
It try to pack spheres with tangency. Spheres could cross a little the volume boundary.
It allow to specify particle redius based on statistical distributions.
The algorithm is based in this paper:
"Procedure of packing generic particles for the discrete element method"
Irvin Pérez Morales, Roberto Roselló Valera, Yordanis Pérez Brito, Harold Díaz-Guzmán Casañas y Carlos A. Recareu Morfa
Revista Internacional de Métodos Numéricos para Cálculo y Diseño en Ingeniería
options:
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Preferences Window: Meshing->Sphere / circle->Granular
Sphere and circle main options

• Boundary tolerance factor: This parameter is a relative factor of the maximum element size, it is used to set the maximum distance to find a particle considered as belonging to the boundary. Value 1.0 (default) means that it will be considered as boundary all particles with distance to boundary less or equal to the maximum diameter defined.

• • Distribution Type: Allow select the kind of statistical distribution of the particle sizes to be obtained.
    • Gauss: Normal distribution
    • Exponential: Exponential distribution
    • Cauchy: Cauchy distribution
    • Flat: Uniform distribution (linear)
    • Constant: Uniform distribution with constant particle size

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• Standard deviation: Standar deviation of a gaussian distribution, relative to mean element's radius
• Scale: Scale parameter for the Exponential, Cauchy and Rayleigh distributions
• Minimum radius factor: Defines a factor related with the mean element's radius that is ised to calculate its minimum radius to be generated.
• Maximum radius factor: Defines a factor related with the mean element's radius that is ised to calculate its maximum radius to be generated.

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• Random mesh: This option allows to define if we want to obtain the same meshs on each meshing. In case of select it each meshing will provide a different resulta because elements size will be obtained in a random way.
• Prioritize: Allow to weight more for the meshing process to preserve more the boundary shape or the particles size.
  • Boundary fitting: Priorize adjust better the particles to the geometry boundary
  • Size distribution: Piorize ajust better the particle sizes to the selecte statistical distribution
• High porosity: Selecting it allows to mesh with hight porosity values, then the slide widget sets the porosity value to be achieved.

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• Mesh until End: If this preference is set, the mesh generator will continue until it has completed the meshing process, even if there are surfaces or volumes that cannot be meshed.
• No Mesh Frozen layers: If this preference is set, entities belonging to a frozen layer will not be meshed.
• Mesh always by default: this option Changes the default Mesh/NoMesh meshing criteria (Mesh NoMesh). Entities will always be meshed even if they have higher entities. Example: If surfaces are checked when meshing a volume, volume elements and surface elements will be obtained.

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• Smoothing: You can choose the level of smoothing required to enhance the mesh after the generation. It is applicable to unstructured meshes. Options are:

·Normal: only the standard laplacian-like smoothing is performed.
·HighAngle: an additional smoothing trying to improve the angle of the elements is performed.
·HighGeom: an additional smoothing with a chordal error criteria in order to adapt the mesh in high curvature areas of the model is performed.

• Avoid elements with all its nodes in boundary: if this option is set, there won't be any element in the mesh which has all its nodes in the boundary of the geometrical entity. This is only applicable for unstructured meshes.
• Allow quadrilateral dominant meshes: If this preference is set, unstructured quadrilateral mesh generator is allowed to use some triangles in the quadrilateral mesh in order to improve elements quality. This option only affect to the mesh of surfaces not belonging to any volume.

Utilities Menu>Preferences>Import and Export
The fourth group of preferences are geometry exchange (import and export) options.
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Preferences Window: Import and Export
Import

• Automatic Collapse After Import: If this option is set then after reading one external format file (IGES, DXF, etc.) one global collapse is made. If it is not set, all surfaces and lines will be independent of each other.
• Automatic Import tolerance: When importing a file or collapsing entities, any points closer together than this distance are considered to be the same (see IGES). Lines and surfaces can also be collapsed.
• Collapse:

·Ignoring Layers: Entities are also collapsed if they belong to different layers.
·Each layer separately: Entities in different layers are not collapsed. (Entities belonging to frozen layers are never considered.)

• IGES: Curve on surface from 3D: If this option is set, IGES curves on surface entities are created from the direct 3D space definition (recommended); if the option is not set, IGES curves are created from the surface space parameter definition.
• IGES: Create all in 'layer to use': If this option is set the IGES entities are created in the current layer to use, instead of using the file layers.

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• IGES: B-Rep output style: If this option is set, exported IGES volumes are written with Boundary Representation Solid Model style; otherwise its surfaces are written as separated trimmed surfaces without topological information.

Some CADs are not able to read the IGES B-Rep style and then can be interesting to use the alternative style.
Utilities Menu>Preferences>Fonts
The user can select the fonts for the diferent text objects with the Fonts panel in the preferences window.
In postprocess a new fonts management system has been implemented. Now GiD uses directly True Type Fonts (R) to draw text inside the postprocess graphical windows.
This allows to draw the characters with smoothed edges.
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Preferences Window: Font
Graphical postprocess fonts
Used to draw text in the graphical windows (OpenGL):

• Legend / Comments font: used to draw the legend and comments.
• Labels font: used to draw the nodal, elemental, results o minimum and maximum labels.
• Graphs font: used to draw the labels on graphs.
• Asian font: used to draw the text when special charactes are detected, which requires special utf-8 codes.
• Quick bitmap font: used to draw fonts when needed.
• Render mode: allows to enable or disable the smooth edge drawing.

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• Show axis: If this option is set, 2D axes are shown in the grid (X and Y).
• Show grid lines: If this option is set, grid lines are shown. It's possible to show/hide grid with the grid button that is located on the bottom right part of the main window.
• Show labels: If this option is set, labels of the major lines are showed.
• Activate snap: If this option is set, snap is activated.

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• X/Y Center: These options determine the position of the center of the grid.

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• X/Y Extents: These options determine the extension of the grid in the X and Y directions.

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• X/Y Spacing: These options determine the spacing between grid lines in the X and Y directions.
• Major line every: This option specifies the number of lines between principal lines in the grid.

Utilities Menu>Preferences>Postprocess
Note: You should be in Postprocess to configure this section.
Several postprocess options can be configured in this level:
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Preferences Window: Postprocess
Use results cache
Enable the use of the result's cache mechanism, to allow reading big result files, without load all of them simultaneously.
The Result's cache mechanism allows the analysis and visualization of lots of results which, otherwise, could not be held in memory. Instead of loading all results from the file(s), a certain amount of memory is used to load and unload the result values as they are needed. Look at the GiD advanced course for a more detailed explanation ( see Results' cache).

• Use a maximum (MB) of: select the amount of memoy, in Megabytes, to be used as result's cache.
• Use indexed binaries: for a faster, direct, access of the results in huge files.
• Use indexed results information: save and read results information in the index files for a faster load time of huge results file(s).

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• To filter wrong coordinate numbers, avoiding them.

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• Use a maximum (MB) of: select the amount of memoy, in Megabytes, to be used as result's cache.
• Use indexed binaries: for a faster, direct, access of the results in huge files.
• Use indexed results information: save and read results information in the index files for a faster load time of huge results file(s).

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• To filter wrong coordinate numbers, avoiding them.

Utilities Menu>Preferences>Postprocess>Mesh elements
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Preferences Window: Postprocess->Mesh elements
General options

• Border angle: Select the angle criteria between faces to consider the shared edge a boundary edge, i.e. sharp edge, or not. Angles between normals of adjacent faces smaller than the criteria set will be considered a sharp edge and visualized when the mesh style 'boundaries' is selected.
• Edge color: Define the colour to be used to draw edges.

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• Point size: Define the size of the drawn elements.
• Quality: Defines the way the elements are drawn.
  • • Quick: Points will be drawn as big dots.
    • Internal texture: An image is used to draw points; it's a compromise between quality and speed.
    • Nice: A triangle mesh, between 4 and 630 triangles big, is used to drawn each point for a nicer quality.
• Nice detail: Level of detail used to draw the points in Nice mode. Higher detail level will draw more triangles for each point.

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• Sphere size factor: factor to be applied to the spheres and circles radius to increase the size of the drawn elements.
• Quality: Defines the way the elements are drawn.
  • • Quick: Spheres and circles will be drawn as big dots.
    • Internal texture: An image is used to draw spheres and circles; it's a compromise between quality and speed.
    • Nice: A triangle mesh, between 4 and 630 triangles big, is used to drawn each sphere and circles for a nicer quality.
• Nice detail: Level of detail used to draw the spheres and circles in Nice mode. Higher detail level will draw more triangles for each sphere or circle.

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• Line size: Defines the width of the lines.
• Quality: Defines the way the elements are drawn.
  • • Quick: Lines are drawn as 3-point thick lines.
    • Nice: Lines are drawn as long 4-sided or 8-sided prisms.
• Nice detail level: Level of detail used to draw the lines in Nice mode.

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• Draw legends: Legends can be switched on or off.
• Draw title: With this option the result name of the current visualization appears at the top of the legend.
• Opaque: Legends can be transparent, showing the result visualization behind them, or opaque.
• Drawborder: If enabled, draws a box arround the legend and comments.
• Num labels: Set the number of labels printed in the color scale of results, to identify color with value.
• Draw user limits: If enabled, the maximum and minimum value of the legend will be surrounded with a box it these where fixed by the use
• Draw outside: Activating this option, the legend is shown in a separate window, thus leaving more space in GiD's windows.

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• Show comments: enable or disable visibility of comments.
• Auto update with current result: If this option is activated, the comments at the bottom of the screem show an automatic content built from the type of analysis, the actual step and the kind of result (see Comments).
• Custom defined comments: allows the user to define a custom comments.

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• Draw contour fill:
  • • By number of colors: Here the number of colors of the results color map can be specified.
    • By width interval: Fixes the width of each color zone. For instance, if a width interval of 2 is set, each color will represent a zone where the results differ by two units at the most.
• Color map: Specifies the properties of the color scale:
  • • Rainbow: The color scale will be the default: starting from blue (minimum) through green to red (maximum).
    • Inverse raindow: The color scale will be the inverse of the default: starting from red (minimum) through green to blue (maximum).
    • Terrain: A physical map-like color ramp will be used.
    • Black & white: Black for Minimum and White for Maximum, and a grey scale between these.
    • White & black: White for Minimum and White for Maximum, and a grey scale between these.
    • 3D Anaglyphs: Colour scale specially useful when the software stereo mode is enabled. Advanced viewing settings
    • 3D Anaglyphs 2: A variation of 3D anaglyphs.
    • User defined: The color scale can be fully set by user. (See color window)
      1. More color options: When the user defined color map is selected a window opens to let you configure the colour scale of the contours easily.
• Set Contour Limits: used to tell the program which contour limits it should use when there are no user defined limits: the absolute minimum and maximum of all sets or shown sets, for the current step or for all steps.
• Out maximum color: With this option you can specify how the outlying values should be drawn: Black, White, Maximum color, Transparent or Material.
• Out minimum color: With this option you can specify how the outlying values should be drawn: Black, White, Minimum color, Transparent or Material.
• Add brightness: Enables or disables the shininess of the colours in Contour Fill. The shininess type can also be choosed between: metallic, plastic and rubber.
• Smoothing type: With this option you can choose between these types of local smoothing:
  • • Minimum value: The minimum value between two adjacent elements is the result that is used.
    • Maximum value: The maximum value between two adjacent elements is the result that is used.
    • Mean value: ( the default) A mean value of the points between two adjacent elements is the result that is used.

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• Contour lines width: Defines the width of the contour lines.

Utilities Menu>Preferences>Postprocess>Vectors
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Preferences Window: Postprocess->Vectors
General options

• Draw interior vectors: This option lets you choose if all vectors should be drawn or draw only the ones placed on model lines.
• Color Mode: This option lets you choose if vectors are drawn in one color (Mono Color) or in several colors (Color Modules).
  • • Number of colors: If you use Color Modules to draw vectors, it is possible to choose the number of colors.
• Change Color (mono): When vectors are drawn in (Mono Color) Color Mode, they are drawn in green. You can change this green color selecting this entry.
• Offset: With this option, you control where the vector should be in relation of the node, ranging from 0, to tie the tail of the arrow to the node, to 1, to tie the tip of the arrow to the node.
• Tensorial results:
  • • Tension vector color: Change the color used for vectors that represents tension.
    • Compression vector color: Change the color used for vectors that represents compression.
• Vector detail: The level of detail can be adjusted to draw the vectors quicker or nicer. The different options are:
  • Line: The vector is drawn as a line, without the arrow head.
  • Point+Line: The vector is drawn as a line, and the head as a point. The style used to draw these point like arrow heads can be modified through the point options, see Mesh elements.
  • 5 Lines: The vector is drawn as a line, and the head is drawn with four lines.
  • 2 Triangles: The arrow head will be drawn with two intersecting triangles.
  • 4 Triangles: The arrow head will be drawn as cones of four triangles.
  • 8 Triangles: The arrow head will be drawn as cones of eight triangles.
• Vector size type: Allows the user to set the size of the vectors to be:
  • • Fixed sized: Then the factor used when the vectors are displayed is the number of pixels of the vector.
    • Modulus dependent: Then the factor used when the vectors are displayed is the factor of magnification of the vector.
• Filter factor: The displayed amount of vectors can be limited when there are lots of vectors to be drawn, for instance, when very dense meshes are used. The option allows to drawn only one vector of every N vectors.

Utilities Menu>Preferences>Postprocess>Iso surfaces
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Preferences Window: Postprocess->Iso surfaces
General options

• Display Style: For isosurfaces there is also a Display Style option, like for Volumes/Surfaces/Cuts. The available options are: All Lines, Hidden Lines, Body, Body Lines (see View style ).
• Transparency: The isosurfaces can be set to Transparent or Opaque (see View style).
• Color Mode: Allows the user to define the colours used to paint the iso surfaces:
  • • Monochrome: All the isosurfaces are drawn with the same colour, which can be adjusted with 'Change colour'.
      1. Mono color: Allows to define the colour of the monochrome isosurfaces, including the transparency factor.
    • Result color: Each isosurface is drawn with a colour indicating its value, the correspondence of which can be seen in the legend.
    • Contour fill color: The isosurfaces are drawn with the colour scale of the current contour fill, i.e., the current contour fill is also drawn over the isosurfaces. If no contour fill is displayed, then the monochrome colour is used.
• Draw always: With this option the isosurfaces will be drawn although the mesh is switched off.
• Show isolines: When the isosurface result option is selected, the isosurfaces of volume meshes are created ans isolines for surface meshes. With this option "Show isolines" the user can switch these isolines on or off.

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• Use triangles of size: If this option is activated the stream lines are drawn with triangles of the specified size. If is not checked the stream lines are drawn with lines.
• Color Mode: Allows the user to define the colours used to paint the stream lines:
  • • Monochrome: All the stream lines are drawn with the same colour, which can be adjusted with 'Change color'.
      1. Color: Allows the definition of the colour of the monochrome stream lines.
    • Stream contour filled: The colour of the streamlines changes, ala Contour Fill acording to the modulus of the vector used to create the stream line.
    • Result contour filled: The stream lines are drawn with the colour scale of the current contour fill, i.e., the current contour fill is also drawn over the stream lines. If no contour fill is displayed, then the monochrome colour is used.
• Label: This option lets you select the kind of label:
  • • None: No labels are drawn.
    • 0-End: Labels are drawn according to the following convention: 0 at the start of the stream line, and the total time taken for the particle to travel at the end.
    • Ini-End: Labels are drawn according to the following convention: 0 at the chosen point, with - time before at the beginning of the stream line and + time after at the end.
• Maximum length: To avoid infinite curves (e.g. in vortex).
• Maximum points: To avoid curves with excessive (and memory expensive) number of points.

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• Line size: determine the thickness of the line given as a pixel factor.
• Quality: the stream line can be drawn using a line element (Quick) or a volumentric element (Nice). Nice is slower than Quick.

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• Detail: Defines how the stream lines are drawn, ie. which volumentric element is used:
  • Points: showing the points calculated for the stream lines and used to draw them.
  • Ribbons: stream ribbons showing the swirl of the velocitys field.
    • Set initial rotation: Sets the initial rotation of the stream ribbons at the selected nodes.
  • 4 sided prisms: stream 'tubes' with constant width based on a 4 sided prims.
  • 8 sided prisms: stream 'tubes' with constant width based on a 8 sided prims.

• Show arrows: With this option Gid draws arrows on the stream lines showing the sense of them.
  • • Monocolor: Defines the color of the arrows when the color mode of the stream lines is monochrome.
    • Size: The size of the arrows.
    • Spacing: The space between the arrows.

Utilities Menu>Preferences>Postprocess>Result surface
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Preferences Window: Postprocess->Result surface
General options

• Draw contour fill: Switches On or Off the contour fill representation of the result used to create the 3D surface.
• Show elevations: Choose how the elevations (lines or faces that connect the result surface with the underlying mesh) are drawn:
  • • None: The mesh and its result surface are drawn separately, without interconnecting lines or faces.
    • Extruded nodes: Lines are drawn between the original nodes of the mesh and the extruded ones, i.e. the nodes of the result surface.
    • Extruded edges: Faces are drawn between the original edges (of the elements) of the mesh and the extruded ones, i.e. the edges of the result surface.
    • Extruded both: Nodes and edges are extruded.
• Extrude edge color: the color to draw the extrude edge.

Utilities Menu>Preferences>Postprocess>Line diagrams
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Preferences Window: Postprocess->Line diagrams
General options

• Show elevations: You can choose how the elevations are drawn. Elevations are lines that connect the nodes and the gauss points of the line element and the graph-style line that represents the result.
  • • None: Switch the elevations off.
    • Nodes only: Draw the elevation lines only on the nodes.
    • Whole line: Draw the elevation lines along the whole line, using nodes and gauss points.
    • Filled line: Draw orange filled elevations.
    • Contour filled line: The colors used to draw the filled elevations will be the same as a contour fill done along the line.

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• Automatically convert cut to set: It this options is selected, cuts are automatically converted to sets (some operations are available for sets but not for cuts).
• Delaunay: cull big elements factor: this value is used to cull (filter out) elements that are XXX times bigger than the mean element size value. Enter 0.0 to disable it.