Mesh Failure Diagnostics, Part 2

Last month, I wrote about Mesh Control and described a process using the Simulation Advisor to fix mesh errors.  If you prefer to operate without the proverbial ‘phone-a-friend’ option, you can always turn the Simulation Advisor off by un-checking the box in your Simulation Options, as shown.  When you uncheck this box, you still have the option of accessing the Simulation Advisor from the Command Manager by selecting the appropriate Advisor in the pull-down menu.

When an assembly failed to mesh in Simulation 2010, you had to know your assembly components well to determine which part(s) failed to mesh.  Recall that the Simulation Feature Tree looked like this:

With SOLIDWORKS Simulation 2011, however, we now have a visual indication for which parts failed to mesh in the Simulation Feature Manager Design Tree.  Notice all of the component icons that are colored red?  Simulation 2011 provides this visual feedback to let you know where the mesh failures occurred.  If you right-click on any of those parts and select ‘Create Mesh’, this will start the Mesh Control dialog for the selected part.  Apply a mesh control and click ‘OK’ to mesh the part.  Using this method, you have to apply mesh controls to a single part at a time.  If you control-select several of the red (failed) parts from the Simulation Feature Manager Design Tree, you need to right click on the Mesh folder and select ‘Apply Mesh Control’.  Note that when you choose this method, you will need to recreate the mesh for the entire assembly.