The nodes and elements in the deeper layers are numbered automatically. By using index fields, the numbers in SPRING can be freely selected, i.e. consecutive numbering is not necessary. Normally, the offset for 3D numbering is 10,000. If you limit yourself to a maximum of 9,999 nodes or elements in a layer, automatic numbering can be carried out by adding 10,000 to each node and element number.

Example of node and element numbering

The advantage for the user is that he only needs a mesh plan of the top (or 2D) layer with node and element numbers to identify any point. For the nth layer, only (n-1)*10,000 needs to be added to the number.

If the offset of 10,000 is not sufficient for a large model, a different (arbitrary) value can be set in the mesh file using the 3DNR data type. For the sake of clarity, round/whole values numbers be used wherever possible.

Automatic reallocation of data