Lite Meshes

Cubit has the ability to represent mesh using either a lightweight or heavy representation. The lightweight representation option is new for Cubit 15.3, and can be referred to as lite. The heavy representation is useful for supporting all the various mesh manipulation operations available in Cubit. While still under development, the lite representation option is intended to be a quick way to display larger meshes while supporting a smaller subset of mesh manipulation operations.

The following are supported operations with lite mesh:

• Creating a lite mesh
• Graphics
• Information
• Modifications to lite mesh
• Exporting a lite mesh

The following items are not yet supported:

• Information and listing of individual hexes, tets, wedges, pyramids, faces, tris and edges
• Modifying the content of blocks, sidesets and nodesets
• Modifying the element type of a block
• Renumbering blocks, sidesets and nodesets
• Topology checks on blocks
• Cleanup on blocks
• Skinning on blocks
• Quality calculations on elements
• Moving blocks or nodesets
• Deleting individual blocks, nodesets and sidesets
• Creating rebar elements
• Smoothing elements
• Refining the mesh
• Merging or equivalence of nodes

Creating a lite mesh

To use the lite mesh representation, one may import a mesh file using the 'lite' option. There is not currently another way to create lite mesh other than importing from a file. The command to import a lite mesh is:

 Import mesh "<filename>" lite

Additional options for lite import can be found under the Import Mesh Lite command.

Graphics

Generally, the graphical features for lite meshes is supported at the same level as for heavy meshes, including the ability to draw, pick, select, highlight, zoom among other operations. The coloring of the mesh is based on blocks, and may be adjusted by the user. Toggling visibility of all sidesets and nodesets can be done by clicking the Display Boundary Conditions toolbar button or with the bc visibility {on|off} command. Toggling visibilty of all blocks can be done by clicking the Display Mesh toolbar button or with the mesh visibility {on|off} command.



The draw, zoom and select commands work on blocks, sidesets and nodesets. Also, selecting those genesis entities in the graphics window will result in them being highlighted in both the graphics window and in the tree. Selecting of nodes and elements has not yet been implemented for meshes imported in lite mode.

Information

There are several ways to view information about the lite mesh. The tree and the property page can show information about the blocks, sidesets and nodesets. Also, the list command can print information about individual blocks, sidesets, and nodesets. The list element command will print out the ID space used by elements. The list node command will show the ID space used by nodes. Listing of individual elements and nodes is not yet supported.

Modification to lite mesh

Some modifications to genesis entities are supported. Blocks, sidesets and nodesets may have names assigned to them. Blocks may have their attributes modified, and materials may be assigned to blocks. Not supported is the ability to modify the contents of blocks, nodesets and sidesets.

Exporting a lite mesh

Exporting a lightweight mesh to an Exodus file is supported. This includes writing out blocks, nodesets, sidesets, element ids, node ids, etc... Not all Exodus data is read in, and if there is some data not recognized by Cubit, it will not be exported. Field data is an example of Exodus data not recognized by Cubit, nor exported. Importing multiple Exodus files and exporting a single file is supported. Importing a single Exodus file and exporting a portion of it is supported. Distribution factors are preserved when reading/writing in lite mode.