CREO Simulate mesh validation

[ilyachaban]

Hello! I would like to ask the community about the mesh validation.

There is a tool for it in CREO Simulate that is useless for a big simulation models (100000+ elements) it is impossible to turn the model while the mesh is displayed. So is there any feature or tool that will help to hide the valid elements and show only bad elements on the screen.

Thank you for the response!

[ThoRig]

I ran Pro|Mechanica for years (now Creo Simulate), and whenever there was an error during meshing, a warning message would pop up and state, "The highlighted elements......then whatever error after that".  However, there would never be any highlighted elements in the display.  Then in Creo Simulate, they seemed to make some improvements, and the element, if it was on the surface of your model, would be highlighted in red if is was not valid.  But what about elements internally?  You cannot see them unless you shrink the elements.  Now, to your question, I do not know of a tool that will highlight bad elements during validation and hide the good ones, but I will look at it, as I do not run simulation any more, but did for about 20 years.  Always something new in Creo.  Now you stated 100000 + elements in a model?  That's scary.  No wonder you cannot rotate it.

[rrabe]

Agree

If the "element" is inside the mesh you have to shrink the displayed mesh - and this is a graphic card killer.

I think I never could really understand how this really was intended to work.  In the new Simulate  versions (I think) you can select the element in the warning windows and it should zoom the element automatically. But sometimes you see nothing and zoom in-out is very difficult.

[ilyachaban · Accepted solution]

I finally found the solution for how to display only bad elements in AutoGEM!

Since PTC Creo doesn’t provide an option to show only the bad elements — instead, it always shows a mix of both good and bad elements, making it a complete mess — I decided to go through every available button, even the ones that didn’t seem to make much sense at first.

So, here’s how you can finally see only the bad elements in the mesh.

Let’s assume there are some bad elements in this mesh — here’s what to do:

…and we want to see only the bad elements.

But first, let’s take a look at how it normally appears when using the Validate Mesh tool — without any workarounds.

In this case, the bad elements are relatively large, but even so, not all of them are clearly visible.

So, let’s adjust the visibility settings to make sure all bad elements are easy to spot.

Turn off all mesh entities.

Hide all idealizations and connections

Turn off all structural and thermal loads.

Now you should see something like this.

In the case of a large assembly, I recommend hiding entire parts and assemblies directly from the model tree to make things clearer.

Now, let’s run the Validate Mesh tool again.

Ta-da! 🎉

[ilyachaban]

I also tried to create a mapkey to make the process a bit easier, but it doesn’t cover all the steps mentioned above.

Make your mesh visible and use mapkey.

mapkey vmesh ~ Command `ProCmdViewSimDisplay` ;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Activate `sim_display` `MeshEntUnselPush`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Select `sim_display` `VisType` 1 `ModelingEntities`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Activate `sim_display` `IdealUnselPush`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Activate `sim_display` `ConnectUnselPush`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Activate `sim_display` `AcceptPush`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Select `mesh` `AgemMenuBar` 1 `InfoMenuPane`;~ Close `mesh` `AgemMenuBar`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Activate `mesh` `ValidMeshPushBtn`;~ Activate `UI Message Dialog` `ok`;\
mapkey(continued) @MANUAL_PAUSELet's find bad elements\nThen click resume;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Command `ProCmdViewSimDisplay` ;~ Activate `sim_display` `IdealSelPush`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Activate `sim_display` `ConnectSelPush`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Select `sim_display` `VisType` 1 `Mesh`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Activate `sim_display` `MeshEntSelPush`;\
mapkey(continued) ~ Activate `sim_display` `AcceptPush`;