Element type

Menu: Mesh->Element type

With this command, the desired element type is assigned to a geometrical entity. It is only necessary to do this when the element type is different from the default (see Mesh Menu).

The different options are:

• Default: For surfaces and volumes. This option lets GiD assign a compatible element type to geometric entities, assigning the default ones if possible.
• Linear: For lines. It allow to assign it to surfaces or volumes for contact entities, to generate only line-elements between pairs of master-slave nodes, instead of surface and volume elements.
• Triangle and Quadrilateral: For surfaces.
• Tetrahedron, Prism and Hexahedron: For volumes.
• Points: Just for volumes. One node elements are generated inside the volume.
• Sphere: Just for volumes. One node elements with radius are generated
• Circle: Just for planar shape surfaces. One node elements with radius and the circle normal are generated
• Linear and Quadrilateral: For contact surfaces.
• Linear, Prism and Hexahedron: For contact volumes.

Quad dominant meshes can also be generated (which have both quadrilateral and triangle element type in the same surface). To generate this meshes, quadrilateral element type sholud be set to the geometrical entity, and the option 'Allow quadrilateral dominant meshes' in Preferences should be checked.

By default, the elements are of minimum order: 3-noded triangle, 4-noded quadrilateral and so on. To increase the degree, use the Quadratic command (see Quadratic type). Quadratic applies to all the elements of the model.

• Point, Circle, Sphere: 1 node.

  Point connectivity:

• Linear: 2 or 3 nodes.

  Line connectivities:

• Triangle: 3 or 6 nodes.

  Triangle connectivities:

• Quadrilateral: 4, 8 or 9 nodes.

  Quadrilateral connectivities:

• Tetrahedra: 4 or 10 nodes.

  Tetrahedron connectivities:

• Hexahedra: 8, 20 or 27 nodes.

  Hexahedron connectivities:

• Prism: 6 , 15 or 18 nodes.

  Prism connectivities:

• Pyramid: 5 or 13 nod

  Pyramid connectivities:

  To see how to get information from GiD concerning element faces see Multiple values return commands from Customization Manual.

  
  To decide which parts of the geometry should be meshed, use the Mesh criteria command (see Mesh criteria).