Techniques for Visualizing D Unstructured Meshes

We present a computational module for interactively visualizing large scale D un structured meshes Scientists and engineers routinely solve large scale computational boundary value problems on unstructured grids These grids typically range from several hundred thousand elements to millions of elements With this ability to solve such large scale problems comes the challenge of viewing the D nite element model geometry on a D screen When the mesh is non uniform the researcher s ability to grasp the complex spatial relationships of the elements often fails The visualization module we have developed for viewing large scale D unstructured nite element meshes includes two novel real time interactive methods a clipping surface utility and a growth algorithm Used separately or together these new utilities allow the user to better explore complicated unstructured polygonal domains