5 B . 3 An Immersive Topology Environment for Meshing

The Immersive Topology Environment for Meshing (ITEM) is a wizardlike environment, built on top of the CUBIT Geometry and Meshing Toolkit. ITEM is focused on three main objectives: 1) guiding the user through the simulation model preparation workflow; 2) providing the user with intelligent options based upon the current state of the model; and 3) where appropriate, automating as much of the process as possible. To accomplish this, a diagnostic-solution approach is taken. Based upon diagnostics of the current state of the model, specific solutions for a variety of common tasks are provided to the user. Some of these tasks include geometry simplification, small feature suppression, resolution of misaligned assembly parts, decomposition for hex meshing, and source and target selection for sweeping. The user may scroll through a list of intelligent solutions for a specific diagnostic and entity, view a graphical preview of each solution and quickly perform the solution to resolve the problem. In many cases, automatic solutions for these tasks can be generated and executed if the user chooses. This paper will discuss the various diagnostics and geometric reasoning algorithms and approaches taken by ITEM to determine solutions for preparing an analysis model.