The 3D ACIS® Modeler (ACIS) is Spatial’s prominent 3D solid modeling engine. 3D InterOp is a CAD data translation framework (Interoperability)
Component:EDA Mesh
From DocR19
EDA Mesh provides 2D and 3D meshing capabilities to the EDA 3D Analysis Suite. This meshing subsystem has a concise, unified ACIS-style API for configuring and creating surface or volumetric meshes from ACIS bodies.
| Operation | Description |
|---|---|
| Mesh Generation | EDA Mesh includes functions to create triangular or quadrilateral surface meshes from ACIS geometry and additional bodies may be added to existing surface meshes.
Tetrahedral volumetric meshes may be generated from the surface meshes or directly from ACIS geometry. |
| Setting up Mesh Parameters (options) | Options objects are provided to the EDA Mesh to set the initial mesh parameters or properties. Surface meshes are controlled by using the va_surface_mesh_options which provides access to some of the most commonly used parameters for this type of mesh. va_tet_mesh_options provides parameters for a volumetric (tetrahedral) mesh. |
| Mesh Refinement | The elements in Surface Meshes may be refined using two mechanisms: first, by controlling the faceting of the input geometry which is used to seed the meshes; and second, by refining the elements in the mesh after it is generated. |
| Querying Meshes | EDA Mesh provides the means to query the mesh topology and the associations between elements/nodes in the mesh and ACIS topology. This information is particularly useful for extracting adjacency properties of the finite element mesh, and their associations with the ACIS model. |
| Displaying Meshes | Both surface and volumetric meshes may be rendered into an open HOOPS segment using a second library vhabridge. Additional options are available to control whether edges and faces are displayed. |
Building EDA Mesh Applications
- Main article: Building EDA Applications
The steps required for creating a Surface Mesh or a Tetrahedral Mesh are shown below, together with example compilation and link commands.
Mesh Topology
- Main article: EDA Mesh Topology
Both surface and volumetric meshes are represented by a set of nodes and a set of elements containing faces and edges. The faces and edges are described as lists of indices into the nodes array for the entire mesh.
Journaling and Versioning
Journaling and Versioning are available for the EDA Mesh functions through the standard AcisOptions mechanism.
C++ APIs
APIs for the EDA Mesh are identified with the prefix api_va_*, where va would roughly stand for "VKI-ACIS", thus identifying the bridge. Additionally, they all follow the convention action-reference-object. For instance, api_va_get_nodes takes a pointer to a mesh, a pointer to an instance of an ACIS ENTITY, and returns an array of mesh node indices.
api_va_action_reference_object(mesh, reference parameter to operate on, return object, options)
This pattern is followed by all except those APIs that create or generate a mesh. In this case, the pattern is action-object. For instance api_va_create_surface_mesh or api_va_generate_surface_mesh where there might be only a return object with or without a reference parameter.
api_va_action_object(mesh, return object, options)
Mesh Parameters (Options)
- Main article: EDA Mesh Options
The EDA Mesh component provides access to a number of options that can be set via the va_surface_mesh_options class, for a surface mesh, or the va_tet_mesh_options class, for a volumetric (tetrahedral) mesh.
Error Codes
Upon failure of an EDA Mesh API, error codes will be returned that explain the failure and suggest possible actions for correction.
