Software Products

Built-in Capabilities

CAD-based Capabilities (based on Rhinoceros 3D CAD software)

-Pros-

-Pros-

• No additional cost
• Very precise control on zones edge length and zone size gradation in the whole model
• Can result in 100 % nicely shaped regular hexahedral elements (required for some problems)
• Mesh can be parametrized (>>if the geometry needs to be modified, the user does not have to start the meshing process from the beginning)
• he FLAC3D building block facility offers structured meshing and basic unstructured meshing capabilities.
• The FLAC3D extrusion tool (v 5.0 and up) is an interactive mesher that is easy to use to build linearly extruded geometries (e.g., tunnels)
• The FLAC3D extrusion tool and FLAC3D building block tools are interactive
• 3DEC built-in blocking capabilities allow for easy creation of extruded polygons and tunnels of any shape
• Tetrahedral meshing of convex blocks is done automatically in 3DEC
• 3D geometries can be created in 3DEC by specifying coordinates defining each face
• 3DEC can automatically convert tetrahedral zones into blocks for bonded-block modeling

• Build very complex 3D geometries in a few hours
• Flexibility and convenience of a fully interactive 3D-CAD system (Rhino) to build and modify the model’s geometry
• Parameterized mesh creation possible (Rhino VB or Python scripting knowledge required)
• Rhino CAD-system is intuitive and very easy to use

Griddle

• Unstructured tetrahedral and hexahedral-dominant* meshing capabilities
• All-hexahedral, structured meshing capability
• Griddle auto-meshing only requires surfaces of model as input (almost any volume shape is allowed)
• Excellent control over element sizes
• A must, if you are dealing with complex geometries

-Cons-

-Cons-

• Usually more time consuming
• Requires experience to build complex meshes
• Usually requires subdividing the volumes to mesh into primitive shapes (can be very difficult for complex 3D geometries, sometimes leading to poor quality zones)
• The Building Block facility has limited CAD-system capabilities

• Cost associated with the purchase of an additional tool