Mesh menu

Generating a mesh is the process by which a mesh is calculated from the geometry definition of the domain. This mesh will be used for the numerical analysis at a later stage. Conditions (see Conditions) and materials (see Materials) assigned to geometric entities will be transferred to the nodes and elements of the new mesh.

Depending on the numerical approach to be used for the calculation, or the requirements of the numerical simulation user can choose between different kinds of meshes to be generated using GiD:

• Cartesian, structured, semi-structured or unstructured
• Linear or quadratic
• With different element types (including particle meshes)

What is meshed and how it is meshed is controlled by some default options which can be changed with the commands described later.

The generation does not depend on whether layers are ON or OFF at the moment of generation (see Layers and groups (only Preprocessing)), but frozen layers are not meshed if the preference NoMeshFrozenLayer is selected (see Preferences ). Every node and element will be assigned to the layer and group in which the original geometrical entity was defined.

Generating a mesh by default in GiD (without assigning any property to the geometrical entities) will produce an unstructured mesh made of triangles and tetrahedra.