Creating a volume mesh before converting to 2D mesh?
 

Hi,

I'm running a basic simulation of a marble in steady flow and I want to use a 2D mesh to save computer memory. My question is: why do I have to volume mesh my geometry before converting it to a 2D mesh? Why do I have to wait a long time for the software to produce a 3D volume mesh, just to make it 2D afterwards?

Thanks

Good question.

Lol, why is it dark in the night?!? Does it help when I tell you, WHY you have to do it?
Even when you know the answer, you can't change it.

But when you want to solve on a 2D mesh, you don't need to mesh a huge 3D geometry. You can modify your geometry to be close to the 2D geometry you want to solve, e.g. cut a small slide out of your geometry.
That means, you still have to create a 3D mesh first, but you don't need to wait "a long time".

If you use the patch independent option 2-D mesh will be generated from surfaces rather than from the volume mesh.

Thanks for your responses. yonchong - is the patch independent option only an ANSYS option?

Thanks.

I am sorry I haven' t read your post properly.

For some reason I thought you are using ICEM for mesh generation.

If you generate surface mesh with ICEM You can choose whether you want to generate off the geometry surface (patch dependemt) or from 3d mesh (patch indepentant).