Volume Decomposition and Feature Recognition for Hexahedral Mesh Generation

Considerable progress has been made on automatic hexahedral mesh generation in recent years. Several automatic meshing algorithms have proven to be very reliable on certain classes of geometry. While it is always worth pursuing general algorithms viable on more general geometry, a combination of the well-established algorithms is ready to take on classes of complicated geometry. By partitioning the entire geometry into meshable pieces matched with appropriate meshing algorithms, the original geometry becomes meshable and may achieve better mesh quality. Each meshable portion is recognized as a meshing feature. This paper, which is a part of the feature based meshing methodology, presents the work on shape recognition and volume decomposition to automatically decompose a CAD model into meshable volumes. There are four phases in this approach: Feature Determination to extract decomposition features, Cutting Surfaces Generation to form the “tailored” cutting surfaces, Body Decomposition to get the imprinted volumes, and Meshing Algorithm Assignment to match volumes decomposed with appropriate meshing algorithms. The feature determination procedure is based on the CLoop feature recognition algorithm that is extended to be more general. Results are demonstrated over several parts with complicated topology and geometry.