Solid mesh

Where it is

Not a setup-tree node. Embedded in the application.

Controls

ELEMENT SIZE

Maximum size

• Control: value (ValueField)
• Unit: mm
• Value modes: none (plain entry)

The in-app guidance depends on the case:

• Leave blank to size it from the body. A temperature field is smooth, so conduction is forgiving of a coarse mesh in a way stress is not — but a thin wall still needs more than one element through it.
• Leave blank to size it from the part. This solves for a VECTOR potential rather than the scalar one Electrostatic and Current conduction use, and meshes the part's surrounding air region as well as the part itself — the field it produces has to go somewhere. What is read off it is flux density, B, the curl of that potential rather than its gradient, and — the same reasoning as the scalar case — one order less accurate than the field it came from, so a corner or air gap you care about wants elements small against it.
• Leave blank to size it from the body. A potential field is as smooth as a temperature one, but what is read off it is its gradient — the field strength, the current density — and a gradient is one order less accurate than the field it came from, so a corner you care about wants elements small against it.
• Leave blank to size it from the part. A pressure field wants several elements per wavelength — the wavelength above, not the part's own size — so a mesh fine enough at 200 Hz can be far too coarse at 2 kHz.
• Leave blank to size it from the cavity, then check it against the boundary layer separately: the viscous/thermal layer this analysis resolves near a wall is often a fraction of a millimetre, far finer than the general element size needed for the wavelength, and this mesher has no boundary-layer refinement control to size it for you.
• Leave blank to size it from the body. This meshes the AIR round the body, out to the far field set on the Models pane, first order because SU2's cells are. The body's surface resolution is what the sensitivity is drawn on, and a viscous run wants boundary layers on it.

Air region size

• Control: value (ValueField)
• Unit: L
• Value modes: none (plain entry)
• Shown when: root.magnetic

How far the surrounding air is meshed, as a multiple of the part's own largest dimension. The field this analysis solves for does not stop at the part's surface, so the air around it has to be in the mesh too — too little of it and the far boundary starts to shape the answer instead of just bounding it.

Air mesh size cap

• Control: value (ValueField)
• Unit: mm
• Value modes: none (plain entry)
• Shown when: root.magnetic

Leave blank to derive it from the air region size above. That derived value makes a bigger air region a coarser mesh everywhere, not only at its own outer edge — doubling the size to give a distant field more room to settle also doubles the element size close to the part, where it was already resolved adequately. Set this explicitly to keep the two independent.

ELEMENT SHAPE

Order

• Control: choice (ComboRow)
• Default: 2
• Bound to: CaseState.solidElementOrder
• Options: Quadratic (mid-side nodes), Linear (corner nodes only)

The in-app guidance depends on the case:

• Fixed at linear for this analysis, and not by preference. The unknown here lives on element EDGES rather than at nodes, and Elmer refuses a second-order mesh outright — “GetEdgeBasis: Can't handle but linear elements, sorry”. Every other family here meshes quadratic, so this is the one place the usual default is exactly wrong.
• Quadratic unless you have a reason. A linear tetrahedron is famously too stiff in bending — it cannot represent a curved edge or a linear stress gradient within itself, so a coarse linear mesh under-predicts deflection and reports a peak stress that is confidently wrong rather than obviously coarse. Linear halves the node count if a model is too big to solve; refine it first.
• Quadratic unless the model is too big to solve. Mid-side nodes cost roughly four times the degrees of freedom on the same elements, and buy a field that varies within an element rather than across it — which matters most for whatever GRADIENT is read off the answer.

Growth rate

• Control: value (ValueField)
• Default: 0.0
• Bound to: CaseState.solidGrading
• Value modes: none (plain entry)

How fast the element size may change from one element to its neighbour, 0.1 (gradual) to 0.9 (abrupt). Blank leaves the mesher's 0.3. Lower spends elements on the transition between a refined feature and the bulk, and is what to reach for when a local refinement has produced a ring of badly-shaped elements around itself rather than a smooth blend.

Minimum size

• Control: value (ValueField)
• Unit: mm
• Default: 0.0
• Bound to: CaseState.solidMinElementSize
• Value modes: none (plain entry)

A floor, not a target. Imported CAD routinely carries slivers and 0.01 mm fillets nobody modelled deliberately, and the mesher will resolve them faithfully — which is how a bracket turns into two million elements because of a feature you cannot see. Set this to the smallest size worth resolving.

Curvature

• Control: value (ValueField)
• Default: 0.0
• Bound to: CaseState.solidCurvature
• Value modes: none (plain entry)

How many elements go around a curve, independently of the size above. Higher resolves a fillet, a bore or a rounded corner more finely without refining the flat regions that do not need it — which is usually where a stress concentration is, and where an element size chosen for the part as a whole is coarsest relative to what it has to describe.

Optimisation

• Control: value (ValueField)
• Unit: passes
• Default: 0
• Bound to: CaseState.solidOptSteps
• Value modes: none (plain entry)

How many passes the mesher spends improving element shape after filling the volume — swapping faces, moving nodes, combining slivers. Blank leaves the mesher's 3. More costs meshing time and buys a better worst element, which is the figure under Quality and the one a solver actually trips over.

GEOMETRY

Meshing…

Label changes with the case; the source gives these forms: Meshing…, Generate mesh.

• Control: action (ToolButton2)

Cancel

• Control: action (ToolButton2)
• Shown when: StructuralJob.busy

Lists this panel shows

Read straight from the data behind the panel, not from a hand-written list.

RESULT

From a fixed list in the application.

Problems reported against this step

The application reports no problems against this step.

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… marks a value the application computes at run time, so the source carries no fixed text for it.