Editor's Pick: Faster meshing for simulation

Coreform has released an update to Cubit, its software for semi-automated meshing. The company says the many new features in this update impact core workflows including meshing, geometry modification and import/export. 

Cubit now supports importing “superelement” block types from an exodus file. The feature supports visualization, picking and listing of superelement blocks. Superelement blocks can also be exported, writing the data just as it was imported. 

Coreform Cubit has had the ability to draw a portion of the model with the Draw command. Geometric entities could be added to the portion that was drawn. Now geometric entities can be removed from the partially drawn model. The company says this simplifies the commands when displaying only a portion of the model. 

Hex meshing gear assembly. Image courtesy of Coreform.

Coreform says the exodus sizing in Cubit now has higher accuracy when computing a size from a location, and when using an element-based search tree. 

There are improvements in how to obtain meshes from blocks, sidesets and notesets. For example, blocks can be specified directly, instead of needing to identify the geometry in the block.  

MeshGems HPC technology (MG-Tetra_hpc) is now the default tet mesher in Coreform Cubit. Coreform says MeshGems has been putting the bulk of their resources into this version. Cubit users who are using high-performance computing can expect to generate higher quality tet meshes and better adherence to prescribed sizes. 

Remesh for groups of triangles has been added to the Remesh commands. In Cubit, Remesh commands are a tool to bypass the mesh deletion process and replace a localized set of deformed elements after analysis. 

There are two new enhancements to Sculpt, resample and material. Using resample, the input volume fraction data from microstructure file formats is down sampled, averaging volume fraction data across multiple cells. With the material option, refinement is done in cells where the predominant volume fraction is a user-specified material ID.

A new Webcut operation has been added. It allows a volume to be cut with surfaces offset from its bounding surfaces. Coreform says this new feature can be used to separate the mesh of the volume boundary. 

STEP Import/Export has been enhanced, so that when a user assigns names to geometry entities, those names will be written into a STEP file upon export. Similarly, upon import, names in STEP will be assigned to the entities. 

There are many more feature improvements in this updates; a full list is available here.

The 2022.11 update to Coreform Cubit is now available directly from Coreform. For more info, click here. 

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.