Assembly Meshing Methods

To ensure that the meshing paradigm most closely meets your engineering needs and design process, Creo Simulate provides two methods for meshing assemblies—flat meshing and hierarchical meshing. These methods have distinct modeling assumptions, have different implications for the overall modeling flow, and address different product development requirements.

Here is an overview of the two methods:

• Flat Meshing—In flat meshing, Creo Simulate approaches an assembly as though its components have no individual mesh history. The mesh generator creates a single, cohesive mesh model for the entire assembly, developing consistent meshes across all mated surfaces, all mated edges, and all subcomponents that you explicitly connected.

Due to its relative ease of use, flat meshing is the preferred meshing method for most assemblies. Consider flat meshing when:

◦ individual component meshes created in the past are unimportant to the current assembly mesh

◦ you want to minimize the number of explicit component connections in the assembly

For details on flat meshing and its implications for your model, see Flat Meshing.

• Hierarchical Meshing—In hierarchical meshing, Creo Simulate assumes that some or all of the assembly components have meshes important to the model as a whole. The mesh generator creates a top-level mesh model for the assembly that uses component meshes wherever possible. It does this by:

◦ adding its own consistent top-level mesh to any unmeshed components, partially meshed components, and load path connections

Hierarchical meshing is a specialized form of meshing primarily suited for large, complex assemblies. Consider hierarchical meshing if:

◦ you want to leverage the meshes already completed for individual components

◦ your design process uses separate teams to mesh individual assembly components and the teams update these meshes at different times. In this case, hierarchical meshing gives you the ability to choose which mesh updates you want to incorporate, and which ones you want to ignore.

◦ you want to maintain one mesh type for some components while establishing a different mesh type for the rest of the assembly—for example, if you want a triangular shell mesh for a set of aircraft flaps and a quadrilateral shell mesh for the wing

For details on hierarchical meshing, guidelines for its use, and implications for your model, see Hierarchical Meshing.

After you decide which type of meshing you want to use, you are likely to develop a workflow that matches the steps required for the mesh. However, even if you begin your work using one type of meshing, you can switch to the other type freely. You simply need to make sure that you have fulfilled any mesh prerequisites.

Be aware that, while you can create flat meshes regardless of whether you use retained or transient meshes, you can create hierarchical meshes only if you configure your session to use retained meshes.