FEATool Multiphysics  v1.17.0
Finite Element Analysis Toolbox
Grid

After a model geometry has been defined, a computational grid or mesh must be generated to allow for the finite element discretization. This section describes how to create or import a compatible grid.

Grid Mode

Grid mode can be selected by pressing the mode button or corresponding menu option. In grid mode the toolbar buttons allow for grid generation, refinement, and accessing the advanced grid generation settings.

  • calls the selected grid generation function to generate and unstructured. The desired overall mean Grid Size is specified in the corresponding edit field which can be set manually or with the slider control.
  • The button is used to uniformly refine a grid. This will split triangular and quadrilateral (2D) grid cells into four subcells, and tetrahedral and hexahedral (3D) ones into eight subcells each. Grid points on boundaries will also be projected and aligned with any geometries in 2D.
  • The Grid Generation Settings dialog box can be opened by pressing the button, or selecting Grid Settings... menu option, and allows for more advanced control over the mesh generation.

Grid Generation Settings

The Grid Generation Settings dialog box shown below

allows for selecting the mesh and Grid Generation Algorithm

  • 2D: Built-in, Gridgen2D, Gmsh, and Triangle
  • 3D: Built-in, Gmsh, and Robust

The built-in default algorithm should work well in most cases and the other algorithms are optional. Specifically the Robust algorithm is appropriate for difficult to mesh 3D geometries and faceted geometries (such as from STL and OBJ CAD formats).

The Subdomain Grid Size and Boundary Grid Size edit fields can be used to prescribe maximum grid sizes for subdomains and boundaries. Accepts a scalar or space separated list of real numbers (one entry for each subdomain or boundary).

The following options are only available and enabled by a subset of grid generation algorithms.

The Quality slider allows setting the target mesh quality. For the Robust algorithm this will correspond to the detail level included features (high quality will include more and finer features of the input geometry).

The number of grid Smoothing steps can be specified in the corresponding edit field.

Cell Type shows which mesh cell types are available Tri, Quad, or Tet. Quadrilateral mesh generation is available with the Built-in and Gmsh algorithms in 2D.

The Reparametrization Angle is available with the Robust and Gmsh mesh generators for STL faceted geometries to set prescribe a feature angle for boundary segmentation (post mesh generation). See the corresponding section below for more details and manual boundary assignment. This parameter is specified in degrees, with zero (0) disabling automatic boundary reparametrization.

Selecting the Boundary Layers checkbox enables mesh generation of structured boundary layers on boundaries (available in 2D with the Gridgen2D and Gmsh mesh generators). The height of the boundary layer can be specified with the Layer Size and also Aspect Ratio between cells. With Gmsh it is also possible to specify the number of mesh Cells in the boundary layer, and the boundary numbers to apply boundary layer generation to (Gridgen2D is limited to boundary layers around internal regions/holes).

Lastly, the Optional Parameters field allows for an additional string of space separated property/value pairs to be supplied to the grid generation call (which effectively appends the user defined options to the gridgen function call, for example 'waitbar' false would suppress the progress bar during grid generation). For the Robust mesh generation algorithm it can be used to pass on CSG operations on geometry objects (with for example 'formula' 'OBJ1 - OBJ2'). See the gridgen command for valid optional arguments that can be passed on.

Grid Menu Options

The Grid menu also features some options to view, edit, and modify grid data. The Convert Grid Cells menu option is used to convert between triangular and quadrilateral cells in 2D, or between tetrahedral and hexahedral cells in 3D. View Subdomains... and View Boundaries... can be used to show resulting geometric entities and their corresponding numbering. This is the numbering used to assign different mesh sizes to different subdomains and boundaries for the built-in grid generator.

The View Selected Cells... menu option allows for specifying an expression to select and show a subset of grid cells, such as x>0 or x>0 & z<=0.5 (useful for viewing the interior of 3D meshes). In 3D, the option Boundary Numbering... is also available to view and modify the boundary numbering of the mesh, and which cells should be assigned to which boundaries. Lastly, the Grid Statistics... option shows mesh statistics such as grid cell quality for the current grid.

The Grid menu also supports the following import and export of grids through external files and to/from the main MATLAB workspace

  • Import Grid > From MATLAB Workspace... imports a valid FEATool grid struct from the main MATLAB workspace.
  • Import Grid > FEniCS/Dolfin Format... imports a grid in FEniCS/Dolfin format (.xml file) (calls impexp_dolfin).
  • Import Grid > FEniCS/Dolfin Format... imports a grid in FEniCS/Dolfin format (.xml file) (impexp_dolfin).
  • Import Grid > GiD Format... imports a grid in GiD format (.msh file) (calls impexp_gid).
  • Import Grid > Gmsh Format... imports a grid in Gmsh format (.msh file) (calls impexp_gmsh).
  • Import Grid > OpenFOAM Format... import a grid in OpenFOAM format (foam2grid).
  • Import Grid > Triangle Format... imports a 2D Triangle grid (.node/.ele files) (calls impexp_triangle).
  • Import Grid > VTK Format... imports a ParaView compatible VTK format grid (.vtk file) (calls impexp_vtk).


  • Export Grid > To MATLAB Workspace exports a grid struct to the main MATLAB workspace with the variable name grid.
  • Export Grid > FEniCS/Dolfin Format... exports a grid in FEniCS/Dolfin format (.xml file) (calls impexp_dolfin).
  • Export Grid > FEniCS/HDF5 Format... exports a grid in FEniCS/HDF5 format (.hdf5 file) (impexp_hdf5).
  • Export Grid > GiD Format... exports a grid in GiD format (.msh file) (calls impexp_gid).
  • Export Grid > Gmsh Format... exports a grid in Gmsh format (.msh file) (calls impexp_gmsh).
  • Export Grid > OpenFOAM Format... exports a grid in OpenFOAM format (calls grid2foam).
  • Export Grid > STL Format... exports a STL grid file (.stl file) (calls impexp_stl).
  • Export Grid > SU2 Format... exports a grid in SU2 format (.su2 file) (calls export_su2).
  • Export Grid > Triangle Format... exports a 2D Triangle polygonal geometry description (.poly file) (calls impexp_triangle).
  • Export Grid > VTK Format... exports a ParaView compatible VTK format grid (.vtk file) (calls impexp_vtk).
  • Export Grid > Web Browser... exports a html plot of the grid to the web browser.

Boundary Renumbering

3D faceted geometries, such as those from imported STL and OBJ CAD file formats, typically do not include enough information to clearly identify geometry boundaries. In such cases it is possible to manually perform boundary assignment of grid cells. Selecting the Boundary Numbering... Grid menu option opens the corresponding dialog box below.

The "Recaculate" button will try to automatically re-number boundaries with the chosen sharp Feature angle (effectively calling the gridbdr function).

The "Manual Boundary Editing/Selection" section allows for manually specifying and changing the boundary numbering. The edit field allows for a selection syntax for the forms x>0 and x>0 & z<=0.5 to select with the coordinates x, y, and z, and selection via boundary numbers as ib==1 or ib>=3 (where ib is the current boundary number) View Menu Options show and highlight the boundaries and cells corresponding to the selection expression. The Edit Selection button allows for manually reassigning a boundary number to the selection, and Delete Selection completely removes the selected cells from the list of boundaries.

External Grid Generators

FEATool Multiphysics also comes with optional and built-in support for the external mesh generators Gmsh and Triangle. External grid generators allow for different grid generation algorithms, control options, and meshing results, which can be useful if the built-in ones have a difficult time meshing a geometry. The Grid Generation Algorithm can be selected with the corresponding option in the Grid Generation Settings dialog box.

In addition to the external grid generator interfaces, FEATool also fully supports mesh import and export from the Dolfin/FEniCS (XML), GiD, and ParaView (VTK/VTP) formats.

Gmsh and Triangle Installation

If Gmsh or Triangle is selected as grid generation algorithm and FEATool cannot find the corresponding binaries, they will automatically be downloaded, and installed when an internet connection is available. Alternatively, the mesh generator binaries can downloaded from the external grid generators repository and/or compiled manually and added to any of the directories available on the MATLAB paths so they can be located by the FEATool program (external binaries are typically placed in the bin folder of the FEATool installation directory). (The grid generator binaries are expected to have the file extensions exe, lnx, mac for Windows, Linux, and MacOS platforms respectively.)

Should Gmsh installation fail, please manually download and install Gmsh from the original source reference (Gmsh version 4.6.0 is recommended as is has been tested and validated for use with FEATool).

Usage Notes

  • Gmsh and Triangle can be used in the FEATool GUI as well as on the MATLAB command line by using the gridgen function with the grid generator arguments gmsh, and triangle, respectively.
  • External grid generators works by exporting the current FEATool geometry in its own native format, make a system call to the grid generator binary, and then re-import the generated grid.
  • For geometries with multiple and overlapping geometry objects the actual subdomain numbering will generally not correspond to the geometry object numbering (two intersecting geometry objects will for example create three or more subdomains and several internal boundaries). In this case the actual subdomain and boundary numbering for vector valued hmax and hmaxb arrays can easiest be visualized and determined by first creating a coarse grid and switching to Equation/Subdomain and Boundary modes, respectively.
  • Gmsh propagates the hmax and hmaxb values down to the specific nodes in the mesh which means that it is currently not possible to exactly define mesh sizes for subdomains and boundaries.

Grid Import and Export

FEATool allows importing and exporting finite element grids between FEniCS, GiD, Gmsh, OpenFOAM, ParaView (VTK), and Triangle formats with the corresponding impexp_dolfin, impexp_gid, impexp_gmsh, import_foam, impexp_vtk, and impexp_triangle functions. These functions can also be accessed from the Grid and Postprocessing menus of the FEATool GUI.

Gmsh Grid Import

Gmsh msh files can be imported either into the GUI using the corresponding menu option, or the impexp_gmsh MATLAB function.

FEATool currently only supports Gmsh mesh file format version 2 (default in Gmsh versions 2-3), which was replaced with an incompatible format in Gmsh version 4.0 and later. When using FEATool to mesh geometries this is handled automatically.

However, one must take care when using Gmsh manually and ensure that Gmsh v4 saves and exports meshes in version 2 format. One can either start Gmsh with the command line argument -format msh2, for example

gmsh.exe -format msh2

or set the following option in the general or mesh specific Gmsh .opt file

Mesh.MshFileVersion = 2;

The option files can be generated by selecting Save Model Options or Save Options As Default in the File menu.

If there are issues importing the mesh into FEATool one can also optionally try to add the -save_all command line argument which corresponds to the Mesh.SaveAll = 1; .opt file option.

ASCII Grid Import

Due to the simple grid format syntax it is possible to manually import grids from other software. The process essentially consists of first exporting the grid point coordinates and grid cell connectivity data from the external grid generation tool into separate text files. Then import them into MATLAB, after which they can be reshaped and used by FEATool. The following steps describe the process

  1. The first step is to output the grid to an ASCII text format. If possible save the grid output to two files, one for the grid vertex coordinates, and another with the grid cell connectivities (this specifies which grid points/vertices make up each cell). If this is not possible one will have to manually open the grid output file in a text editor, and cut and save the grid coordinates and cell connectivities to two different files.
  2. Load the two files in MATLAB (here it is assumed they are saved as p.txt and c.txt):
     load p.txt
     load c.txt
    
  3. Reshape the grid coordinates (p variable) so that it has the form \(n_{sdim}\times n_p\) where \(n_{sdim}\) is the number of space dimensions (1, 2, or 3) and \(n_p\) is the total number of grid points (p essentially consists of rows of x, y, and z-coordinates). Precisely how to reshape depends on the output format from the external grid generator, one might not have to do anything (check the shape by entering the command size(p) or whos), it might be enough to transpose as p = p';, or one might have to reshape with something like p = reshape(p,n_sdim,n_p);.
  4. Similarly, reshape the cell connectivity array c so that it has the shape \(n_v\times n_c\) where \(n_v\) is the number of vertices on each cell (for example 3 for triangles) and \(n_c\) is the total number of cells. Each column should point to the corresponding grid points in p that make up the cell.
  5. The grid vertices must run in counterclockwise order on each cell, so reorient them if necessary. This is usually accomplished by changing the row order, for example c = c([3 2 1],:); which the ordering for triangles.
  6. Use the function gridadj to create an array that points to neighboring cells for each cell edge
     n_sdim = size(p,1);
     a = gridadj( c, n_sdim );
    
  7. Create a vector that assigns a subdomain number for each cell. If the geometry should be one single block and thus not split, a unit row vector is sufficient
     n_c = size(c,2);
     s = ones( 1, n_c );
    
  8. Use the function gridbdr to create boundary edge/face information. The gridbdr function splits external boundaries where the angles are acute
     b = gridbdr( p, c, a );
    
  9. Alternatively, one can manually construct and set the boundary numbering, for example as

     [ix_edge_face,ix_cells] = find( a==0 );
     b = [ix_cells'; ix_edge_face'; ones(1,length(ix_cells))];
     b = [b; gridnormals(p,c,b)];
    

    this creates a boundary array b where all external boundaries are joined. With additional boundary information one can now split the boundary edges and faces (columns) by assigning different boundary numbers (third row in b). A helpful function to use here is findbdr which allows one to find boundary numbers and column indices in to b by prescribing logical expressions such as x>0.5. For example

     [~,ix] = findbdr( struct('p',p,'c',c,'b',b), 'x>0.5', false );
     b(3,ix) = 2;
    

    sets boundary number 2 on all boundary edges/faces where x>0.5 is true.

  10. Create a grid struct to hold all the grid information
    grid.p = p;
    grid.c = c;
    grid.a = a;
    grid.s = s;
    grid.b = b;
    
  11. Now the grid can be used by FEATool functions and subroutines on the command line.
  12. Optionally, one can also add the grid to an existing finite element GUI model by using the Grid Menu option

     Grid > Import Grid > From MATLAB Workspace...
    

    Select the created grid variable to import and press Import. This loads it into the local FEATool memory workspace of the GUI (note that this overwrites the existing fea grid data). Press the Grid mode button to update and show the new grid.

Grid Reference Material

This section describes the format of the grid data structure that FEATool employs as well as advanced command line (CLI) usage such as manually creating and importing grids.

Grid Format

The grid format used by FEATool is specified in the grid struct with the following fields

Field Description Size
p Grid point coordinates (n_sdim, n_points)
c Grid cell connectivity (n_vertices_per_cell, n_cells)
a Grid cell adjacency (n_edges/faces_per_cell, n_cells)
b Boundary information (3+n_sdim, n_boundary_edges/faces)
s Grid cell subdomain list (1, n_cells)

The coordinates of the grid points are specified by an array p, with the row number indicating the i-th coordinate direction, and column number the corresponding grid point number.

Cell connectivities are specified in the c array, where each column point to the grid points (in p) making up each cell. The row index gives the local vertex number and the column index the cell number. Moreover, the grid points are numbered counterclockwise in each cell.

Adjacency, meaning pointers to neighboring cells, are specified in the a array. Similar to c the row index gives the local edge in 2D or face number in 3D (starting with the corresponding grid point in c) and the column index points to the cell number. If the edge/face is on an external boundary the corresponding entry in a is 0.

Boundary information is specified in the b array. The cell, edge/face, and boundary numbers are prescribed in the first to third rows. The last n_sdim rows consists of the outward pointing unit normals corresponding to each boundary cell edge/face.

A list of subdomain numbers for each cell is given in the s vector.

Grid Cell Definitions

The various grid cells available in FEATool are defined in this section.

1D Line

In one dimension only the simple straight line segment grid cell is available. Grid Example 1 shows how this can be defined and used.

2D Triangle (Simplex)

The 2D triangular grid cell is defined with vertices in counter clockwise order. Local edges ei are defined by the local vertices vi as

[ e1 ;    [ v1 v2 ;
  e2 ; =    v2 v3 ;
  e3 ]      v3 v1 ];

2D Quadrilateral

The quadrilateral grid cell is similarly defined with vertices in counter clockwise order. Local edges ei are defined by the local vertices vi as

[ e1 ;    [ v1 v2 ;
  e2 ;      v2 v3 ;
  e3 ] =    v3 v4 ;
  e4 ]      v4 v1 ];

3D Tetrahedron (Simplex)

The 3D tetrahedral grid cell is defined with vertices in counter clockwise order. Local edges ei are defined by the local vertices vi as

[ e1 ;    [ v1 v2 ;
  e2 ;      v2 v3 ;
  e3 ;      v3 v1 ;
  e4 ; =    v1 v4 ;
  e5 ;      v2 v4 ;
  e6 ]      v3 v4 ];

The local faces fi are defined by the local vertices vi as

[ f1 ;    [ v1 v2 v3 ;
  f2 ;      v1 v2 v4 ;
  f3 ; =    v2 v3 v4 ;
  f4 ]      v3 v1 v4 ];

3D Hexahedron

The hexahedral brick grid cell is defined with vertices in counter clockwise order. Local edges ei are defined by the local vertices vi as

[ e1  ;    [ v1 v2 ;
  e2  ;      v2 v3 ;
  e3  ;      v3 v4 ;
  e4  ;      v4 v1 ;
  e5  ;      v1 v5 ;
  e6  ;      v2 v6 ;
  e7  ; =    v3 v7 ;
  e8  ;      v4 v8 ;
  e9  ;      v5 v6 ;
  e10 ;      v6 v7 ;
  e11 ;      v7 v8 ;
  e12 ]      v8 v1 ];

The local faces fi are defined by the local vertices vi as

[ f1 ;    [ v1 v2 v3 v4 ;
  f2 ;      v1 v2 v6 v5 ;
  f3 ;      v2 v3 v7 v6 ;
  f4 ; =    v3 v4 v8 v7 ;
  f5 ;      v4 v1 v5 v8 ;
  f6 ]      v5 v6 v7 v8 ];

Grid Example 1

The following code can be used to manually define a one dimensional grid with 10 uniformly spaced cells on the line (0..1)

grid.p = 0:0.1:1;
grid.c = [1:10;2:11];
grid.a = [0:9;2:10 0];
grid.b = [1 10;1 2;1 2;-1 1];
grid.s = ones(1,10);

Alternatively one can use the grid utility function linegrid

grid = linegrid( 10, 0, 1 );

The plotgrid function can be used to plot and visualize a grid

plotgrid( grid )

Grid Example 2

A 2 by 2 unit square rectangular grid can be created with the following commands

grid.p = [repmat([0,0.5,1],1,3);0 0 0 0.5 0.5 0.5 1 1 1];
grid.c = [1 2 5 4;2 3 6 5;4 5 8 7;5 6 9 8]';
grid.a = [0 2 3 0;0 0 4 1;1 4 0 0;2 0 0 3];
grid.b = [1 2 2 4 4 3 3 1;1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4;1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4; ...
          0 0 1 1 0 0 -1 -1;-1 -1 0 0 1 1 0 0];
grid.s = ones(1,4);

The rectgrid function can also be used to create rectangular grids, in this case

grid = rectgrid( 2, 2, [0 1;0 1] );

As before the grid can be plotted, visualizing both grid point and cell numbers, with

plotgrid( grid, 'nodelabels', 'on', 'cellabels', 'on' )

Similarly, the boundaries can be visualized with the function plotbdr (subdomains can be visualized with plotsubd)

plotbdr( grid )

As FEATool also supports simplex triangular cells in two dimensions a grid consisting of quadrilaterals can easily be converted with the utility function quad2tri

grid = quad2tri( grid )

Reverse conversions can be made with tri2quad function which uses Catmull-Clark subdivision. In 3D the hex2tet and tet2hex functions perform similar conversions.

Grid Example 3

A more complex example, a grid for a rectangle with a circular hole can be created by first creating geometry objects (a rectangle and a circle), applying a formula to construct the geometry shape, and then calling the automatic unstructured grid generation function gridgen

% Geometry definition.
xmin  = 0;
xmax  = 1;
ymin  = 0;
ymax  = 1;
tag1  = 'R1';
gobj1 =  gobj_rectangle( xmin, xmax, ymin, ymax, tag1 );

xc    = (xmax-xmin)/2;
yc    = (ymax-ymin)/2;
r     = 0.25;
tag2  = 'C1';
gobj2 =  gobj_circle( [xc yc], r, tag2 );

geom.objects = { gobj1 gobj2 };
formula = 'R1 - C1';
geom = geom_apply_formula( geom, formula );
fea.geom = geom;

% Grid generation.
hmax = 0.1;
fea.grid = gridgen( fea, 'hmax', hmax );

As before the grid can be plotted, visualizing both grid point and cell numbers, with

plotgrid( grid, 'nodelabels', 'on', 'cellabels', 'on' )

Creating Structured Grids

The computational finite element library in FEATool supports FEM shape functions for structured grids (quadrilaterals in 2D and hexahedra in 3D). Although more difficult to generate automatically, structured grids are often computationally superior, allowing for higher accuracy with a smaller number of cells.

In FEATool, structured tensor-product grids of basic geometric shapes can easily be generated on the command line with the following MATLAB m-script functions

Function Description
linegrid Create a 1D line grid
circgrid Create a 2D structured circular grid of quadrilateral cells
holegrid Create a 2D rectangular grid with a circular hole
rectgrid Create a 2D rectangular grid of quadrilateral cells
ringgrid Create a 2D grid of a ring shaped domain
blockgrid Create a 3D structured block grid
cylgrid Create a 3D structured cylindrical grid
spheregrid Create a 3D grid for a spherical domain

Moreover, the grid utility functions selcells, delcells, gridextrude, gridmerge, gridrevolve, gridrotate, and gridscale can be used to manually modify, transform, and join grids to more complex structures.

The figure below shows three examples of more complex grids created by using these functions.

The first flow over cylinder benchmark grid is for example created with the following commands:

 grid1 = ringgrid( [0.05 0.06 0.08 0.11 0.15], ...
                   32, [], [], [0.2;0.2] );
 grid2 = holegrid( 8, 1, [0 0.41;0 0.41], 0.15, [0.2;0.2] );
 grid2 = gridmerge( grid1, 5:8, grid2, 1:4 );
 grid3 = rectgrid( [0.41 0.5 0.7 1 1.4 1.8 2.2], ...
                   8, [0.41 2.2;0 0.41] );
 grid  = gridmerge( grid3, 4, grid2, 6 );

And the lower right revolved grid with these commands:

 grid = rectgrid();
 grid = gridscale( grid, {'1-(y>0.5).*(y-0.5)' 1} );
 grid = delcells( selcells( ...
          '((x<=0.8).*(x>=0.2)).*(y<=0.2)', grid ), grid );
 grid = gridrevolve( grid, 20, 0, 1/4, 2, pi/2, 0 );

The last example with two brackets attached to an I-beam section is more complex:

 grid01 = ringgrid( 1, 20, 0.03, 0.06, [0;0] );
 indc01 = selcells( grid01, 'y<=sqrt(eps)' );
 grid01 = delcells( grid01, indc01 );

 grid02 = holegrid( 5, 1, .06*[-1 1;-1 1], .03, [0;0] );
 indc02 = selcells( grid02, 'y>=-sqrt(eps)' );
 grid02 = delcells( grid02, indc02 );
 grid2d = gridmerge( grid01, [5 6], grid02, [7 8] );

 grid1 = gridextrude( grid2d, 1, 0.02 );
 grid1 = gridrotate( grid1, pi/2, 1 );
 grid2 = grid1;
 grid1.p(2,:) = grid1.p(2,:) + 0.03;
 grid2.p(2,:) = grid2.p(2,:) - 0.01;

 x_coord = [ -0.08 linspace(-0.06,0.06,6) 0.08 ];
 y_coord = [ -0.2 -0.15 -0.1 -0.05 -0.03 -0.01 ...
              0.01  0.03  0.05  0.1  0.15  0.2 ];
 grid3 = blockgrid( x_coord, y_coord, 1, ...
                    [-0.08 0.08;-0.2 0.2;-0.08 -0.06] );
 grid4 = blockgrid( 1, y_coord, 5, ...
                    [-0.01 0.01;-0.2 0.2;-0.18 -0.08] );
 grid5 = grid3;
 grid5.p(3,:) = grid5.p(3,:) - 0.12;

 grid = gridmerge( grid1, 8, grid3, 6 );
 grid = gridmerge( grid2, 8, grid, 19 );
 grid = gridmerge( grid4, 6, grid, 24, 1 );
 grid = gridmerge( grid5, 6, grid, 33, 2 );

After, the grids have been created on the command line they can also be imported into the FEATool GUI (by using the Grid > Import Grid > From MATLAB Workspace... menu option).

Quadrilateral Grid Generation

Using quadrilateral grid cells are often advantageous to triangular cells in that they can provide somewhat more accuracy when aligned with geometry features and also tends to require less overall grid cells.

A mesh of quadrilateral grid cells can be created by using the gridgen function with quad as grid generation argument. This tries to align quadrilateral cell edges with immersed interfaces described by distance and level set functions. The algorithm then uses the zero level set contour from the distance functions to align grid cell edges with external geometry object boundaries. Furthermore, the cells are split in a way to treat edge cases such as when an interface segment crosses a cell diagonal. Optionally, the Built-in and Gmsh mesh generators also allows for quadrilateral mesh generation in 2D. Finally, it is also possible to subdivide triangles and convert into quadrilaterals, however the resulting grids are often of poor quality and not suitable for physics simulations.

Grid Utility Functions

The following functions are available for working with and processing grids

Function Description
gridgen Unstructured automatic grid simplex generation
gridgen_scale Grid generation with scaling of geometry objects
gridrefine Refine a grid uniformly
gridstat Show grid statistics
gridsmooth Apply smoothing to a grid
gridextrude Extrude a grid from 2D to 3D
gridrevolve Extrude and revolve a 2D grid to 3D
gridrotate Rotate a grid along a specified axis
gridscale Apply scaling to a grid
gridmerge Merge two grids along boundaries
gridnormals Determine normal vectors to external cell edges/faces
get_boundary_layers Find boundary layers
quad2tri Convert a grid of quadrilateral cells to triangular cells
tri2quad Convert a grid of triangular cells to quadrilateral cells
hex2tet Convert a grid of hexahedral cells to tetrahedral cells
tet2hex Convert a grid of tetrahedral cells to hexahedral cells
impexp_dolfin Import and export FEniCS/Dolfin grid data
import_foam Import OpenFOAM dictionary data
impexp_gid Import and export GiD grid data
impexp_gmsh Import Gmsh grid and postprocessing data
impexp_hdf5 Import and export FEniCS/HDF5 grid data
export_su2 Export grid data in SU2 format
impexp_triangle Import and export 2D Triangle grid and polygon data
impexp_vtk Import and export ParaView VTK grid data
grid2foam Convert and export grid data to OpenFOAM format
gridcheck Check grid for errors
gridadj Create grid adjacency information
gridbdr Create grid boundary information
gridbdre Create 3D grid edge boundary information
gridbdrx Reconstruct internal boundaries
gridvert Create grid vertex information
gridedge Create grid edge information
gridface Create grid face information
findbdr Find boundary indices and numbers
selcells Find cell indices from an expression
delcells Delete a selection of cells from a grid
plotbdr Plot and visualize boundaries
plotsubd Plot and visualize subdomains
plotgrid Plot and visualize grid