Built-in Capabilities
CAD-based Capabilities (based on RhinoCAD system)
-Pros-
-Pros-
- No additional cost
- Very precise control on zones edge length and zone size gradation in the whole model
- Can result in 100 % nicely shaped regular hexahedral elements (required for some problems)
- Mesh can be parametrized (>>if the geometry needs to be modified, the user does not have to start the meshing process from the beginning)
- New in Version 6.0! The FLAC3D building block facility offers structured meshing and basic unstructured meshing capabilities.
- The FLAC3D extrusion tool (v 5.0 and up) is an interactive mesher that is easy to use to build linearly extruded geometries (e.g., tunnels)
- The FLAC3D extrusion tool and FLAC3D building block tools are interactive
- 3DEC built-in blocking capabilities allow for easy creation of extruded polygons and tunnels of any shape
- Tetrahedral meshing of convex blocks is done automatically in 3DEC
- 3D geometries can be created in 3DEC by specifying coordinates defining each face
- 3DEC can automatically convert tetrahedral zones into blocks for bonded-block modeling
- Build very complex 3D geometries in a few hours
- Flexibility and convenience of a fully interactive 3D-CAD system (Rhino) to build and modify the model’s geometry
- Parameterized mesh creation possible (Rhino VB or Python scripting knowledge required)
- Rhino CAD-system is intuitive and very easy to use
Griddle (automatic mesher; NEW)
- Unstructured tetrahedral and hex-dominant meshing capabilities
- Griddle auto-meshing only requires surfaces of model as input (almost any volume shape is allowed)
- Excellent control over element sizes
- A must, if you are dealing with complex geometries
BlockRanger (mapped mesher; Free update to V 1.2)
- All-hex (mapped meshes) inside hex-, prism-, tet-like solid shapes that are interactively constructed withRhino to conform to your geometry
-Cons-
-Cons-
- Usually more time consuming
- Requires experience to build complex meshes
- Usually requires subdividing the volumes to mesh into primitive shapes (can be very difficult for complex 3D geometries, sometimes leading to poor quality zones)
- The Building Block facility has limited CAD-system capabilities
- Cost associated with the purchase of an additional tool
- All-hex meshing not available in Griddle
Note: *A hex-dominant mesh is a mesh composed mostly of hexahedral elements but also wedge, pyramid, and tetrahedral elements where necessary to conform to the geometry.