Once the node generation has been completed for a specific area or globally, these nodes can be meshed (area-wise or globally) using elements. The triangulation algorithm (advancing front) used in SPRING first meshes the nodes with triangles, taking all included contours into account. Then, (if triangles and quadrilaterals are to be generated) suitable triangles are combined into quadrilaterals to reduce the number of elements, thus reducing the computational and memory requirements.

After the elements have been created, there are sometimes areas where an unfavourable mesh structure only becomes apparent when the nodes are connected. These areas can be reworked by local mesh editing (e.g. deleting and regenerating nodes and elements, merging nodes or parts of quadrilaterals). The SPRING mesh menu offers various options for editing the mesh geometry.

Once the mesh geometry has been finalised, it must be checked for possible errors using the geometry checks function (Mesh Checks…) before assigning attributes to the nodes and elements.

Finished FE mesh

Attributes