Fluent Meshing Migration Manual

ANSYS, Inc. Release 17.0

Southpointe January 2016
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Table of Contents
1. Migrating to Fluent Meshing 17.0 .......................................................................................................... 1
1.1. The Contents of This Manual ............................................................................................................. 1
1.2. Additional Resources ........................................................................................................................ 1
2. Feature Changes in Fluent Meshing 17.0 ................................................................................................ 3
2.1. Changes in Product Behavior from Previous Releases ......................................................................... 3
2.2. Added Features ................................................................................................................................ 3
3. Text Command List Changes in Fluent Meshing 17.0 ............................................................................. 7
3.1. Modified Fluent Meshing Text Commands ......................................................................................... 7
3.2. New Fluent Meshing Text Commands ................................................................................................ 8

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iv of ANSYS, Inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliates.
Chapter 1: Migrating to Fluent Meshing 17.0
The purpose of the Fluent Meshing Migration Manual is to help you transition to the most recent version
of ANSYS Fluent Meshing.

Read through the entire document to understand the changes that have taken place.
1.1.The Contents of This Manual
1.2. Additional Resources

1.1. The Contents of This Manual

This version of the Fluent Meshing Migration Manual highlights changes between Fluent Meshing 16.2
and Fluent Meshing 17.0. This document will include a brief description of new features and changes
in text command settings. The information is enclosed in the following chapters:

• Feature Changes in Fluent Meshing 17.0 (p. 3)

• Text Command List Changes in Fluent Meshing 17.0 (p. 7)

If you are upgrading across several releases, you may find it helpful to consult technical support for
assistance.

1.2. Additional Resources

For a complete list of Fluent manuals, see The Contents of the Fluent Manuals.

To access documentation files on the ANSYS Customer Portal, go to http://support.ansys.com/document-

ation. Here you can also find Release Notes and a list of Known Issues and Limitations. Expand the
General category to access these documents

For a list of platform/OS levels that are supported in the current release, visit the ANSYS website.

Please note that beta features have not been fully tested and validated. ANSYS, Inc. makes no commit-
ment to resolve defects reported against these prototype features. Changes in behavior are sometimes
expected and are not captured in this document. However, if there are differences between the Release
16.X beta features and the Release 17.0 standard Fluent Meshing features that concern you, contact
technical support for assistance. Your feedback is appreciated and will help us improve the overall
quality of the product.

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Chapter 2: Feature Changes in Fluent Meshing 17.0
Several features have been improved or added in Fluent Meshing Release 17.0.

The following sections describe such feature changes:

2.1. Changes in Product Behavior from Previous Releases
2.2. Added Features

2.1. Changes in Product Behavior from Previous Releases

• The Select File dialog box now dynamically lists files matching a partial file name rather than using the *
wildcard character.

• The mesh check will issue a warning if multiple cell zones are maintained across an interior boundary.
The boundary type in such cases should be set to internal instead.

• The functionality for the Boundary Wrapper is available through text commands only.

• The Auto Mesh feature now lets you choose to Merge Cell Zones or keep cell zones separate when doing
object-based volume meshing.

Enabling Merge Cell Zones when meshing multiple closed regions will result in the prism cells being
merged with tet cell zones for each meshed region.

• When merging volumetric regions, shared face zones will be deleted. However, if there are cell zones asso-
ciated with the regions, then merging the regions will not delete the shared face zones. In this case, the
shared face zones will be deleted when the cell zones are deleted.

• In object-based workflows, merging cell zones requires that they be in the same volumetric region.

To merge cell zones that cannot be in the same volumetric region because they are not contiguous,
you will need to first delete the object(s) only, and then use the Manage Cell Zones dialog box.

• The options for prism post improvement now accept multiple zones as input.

• The bounded mesh will always be redisplayed after cell modification operations.

• Options previously available in the Caps category in the Controls dialog box are now available in the Patch
Options group in the ribbon.

2.2. Added Features

The new features available in the meshing mode in Fluent include changes to the object-based workflow.
There are also enhancements to many existing features, and improved robustness through defect fixes.

Object Based Meshing Workflow

The following enhancements have been made:

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Feature Changes in Fluent Meshing 17.0

• An option is available for creating labels for unlabeled zones of geometry objects. You can create labels
based on the geometry object names or specify a label of your choice.

• Selective volumetric regions can be meshed using the Auto Fill Volume option. You can create a tetra-
hedral, hexcore, or hybrid (tetrahedra and prism or hexcore and prism) mesh in each region.

• An Update option is available to recompute Volumetric regions while preserving the region names or
types.

• A backup is created for the mesh object surface mesh before volume meshing. The Restore Faces option
can be used to restore the surface mesh when required.

• The join and intersect operations are now available via hot-keys.

• An interactive feature to extract the edges of selected face zones or surfaces and creates a edge zone
in the selected object, is available as an onscreen tool button.

• The patching tools contain additional options for object/zone granularity and type.

• A new option to create Polyhedral cells is now available for Volume Fill in the Auto Mesh dialog box.
This is available for object-based meshing, requires triangular surface mesh, and supports scoped prisms.

Note

When switching a polyhedral mesh to solution mode, a message regarding options

for the use of node weights in post processing is presented.

User Experience
The following enhancements have been made:

• The user interface contains a ribbon with options to manage the display and select objects or zones.

• Toolbars can be enabled/disabled and positioned in the interface as required.

• The Highlight option enables the highlighting of objects, face zone labels, volumetric regions, or cell
zones selected in the tree and the graphics window.

• The Projection toolbar enables you to switch between a perspective view of the graphics (default) and
an orthographic view.

CAD Import
The following enhancements have been made:

• A new command enables the removal of the path prefix from object/zone names on import.

Parallel Meshing
The following enhancements have been made:

• Auto partitioning of prism base zones is now available.

• Case files can be written in HDF5 format and can be read in Fluent solution mode.

Miscellaneous
The following enhancements have been made:

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 Added Features

• The command for separating face zones by cell neighbors also supports separation of interior face zones.

• The collapse and merge operations for boundary mesh modification can now be undone using the Undo
option or a hot-key.

• A new command enables connecting (stitching) a zone to another which is connected to an existing
volume mesh.

• Query functions are now available for obtaining:

– lists of all unreferenced zones or unreferenced zones based on a filter string

– lists of regions for an object or for a list of face zones

– the list of face zones for a list of labels specified

– lists of labels for an object based on a filter string, or for a list of face zones

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Chapter 3: Text Command List Changes in Fluent Meshing 17.0
Changes to the text command lists are classified as either Modified or New; where a modified command
refers to either a changed behavior or a deleted command, and a new command is one that did not
exist in previous versions of Fluent Meshing.

Details of the text command list changes are tabulated in the following pages:
3.1. Modified Fluent Meshing Text Commands
3.2. New Fluent Meshing Text Commands

3.1. Modified Fluent Meshing Text Commands

Modified text commands appear in the following tables, grouped according by menu.

• Table 3.1: Modified Text Commands/Settings for the boundary/ Menu (p. 7)

• Table 3.2: Modified Text Commands/Settings for the mesh/ Menu (p. 7)

Table 3.1: Modified Text Commands/Settings for the boundary/ Menu

Text Command Modified Command or Setting

/boundary/remesh/stitch-all-face-zonesThe face zones will be remeshed automatically after
the stitch operation.
/boundary/remesh/stitch-face-zones The face zones will be remeshed automatically after
the stitch operation.
The command also supports separation of interior
/boundary/separate/sep-face-zone-by-cnbor
face zones based on cell neighbors.

Table 3.2: Modified Text Commands/Settings for the mesh/ Menu

Text Command Modified Command or Setting

/mesh/auto-mesh This command now prompts for merge cell
zones? in object-based automesh. Default is
yes.
This command has been removed.
/mesh/auto-mesh-controls/copy-object-zones

This command has been removed.

/mesh/auto-mesh-controls/create-object-on-failure

This command has been replaced with

/mesh/hexcore/controls/relative-island-thresholds
/mesh/hexcore/controls/island-
thresholds
/mesh/manage/merge This command requires the cell zones to be in
the same volumetric region.
This option is now disabled by default.
/mesh/prism/controls/normal/intersect-detect?

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Text Command List Changes in Fluent Meshing 17.0

Text Command Modified Command or Setting

/mesh/prism/improve/improve-prism-cells The command accepts multiple cell zones as
input.
/mesh/prism/improve/smooth-prism-cells The command accepts multiple cell zones as
input.
The command accepts multiple cell zones as
/mesh/prism/improve/smooth-improve-prism-cells
input.

3.2. New Fluent Meshing Text Commands

Text commands added in the latest release of Fluent Meshing appear in the following tables, grouped
according by menu.

• Table 3.3: New Text Commands for the boundary/ Menu (p. 8)

• Table 3.4: New Text Commands for the file/ Menu (p. 8)

• Table 3.5: New Text Commands for the mesh/ Menu (p. 8)

• Table 3.6: New Text Commands for the objects/ Menu (p. 9)

• Table 3.7: New Text Commands for the parallel/ Menu (p. 9)

Table 3.3: New Text Commands for the boundary/ Menu

Text Command
/boundary/remesh/stitch-with-preserve-boundary

Table 3.4: New Text Commands for the file/ Menu

Text Command
/file/import/cad-options/strip-path-prefix-from-names?

Table 3.5: New Text Commands for the mesh/ Menu

Text Command
/mesh/auto-mesh-controls/backup-object

/mesh/poly/

/mesh/poly/collapse

/mesh/poly/controls/

/mesh/poly/controls/smooth-controls/

/mesh/poly/improve

/mesh/poly/local-regions/

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 New Fluent Meshing Text Commands

Text Command
/mesh/poly/quality-method

/mesh/poly/remesh

Table 3.6: New Text Commands for the objects/ Menu

Text Command
/objects/labels/create-label-per-object

/objects/labels/create-label-per-zone

/objects/volumetric-regions/auto-fill-volume

/objects/volumetric-regions/change-type

/objects/volumetric-regions/compute

/objects/volumetric-regions/delete

/objects/volumetric-regions/delete-cells

/objects/volumetric-regions/hexcore/

/objects/volumetric-regions/list

/objects/volumetric-regions/merge

/objects/volumetric-regions/rename

/objects/volumetric-regions/scoped-prism/

/objects/volumetric-regions/tet/

/objects/volumetric-regions/update

Table 3.7: New Text Commands for the parallel/ Menu

Text Command
/parallel/auto-partition?

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