Free Quad

) to create an unstructured quadrilateral mesh on boundaries in 3D and domains in 2D. You can control the number, size, and distribution of elements by using Size and Distribution nodes.

To create an unstructured quadrilateral mesh:

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From the contextual toolbar (Mac and Linux), choose from the menu (

) (3D components) or click (2D components).

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Right-click a node and choose . For 3D components, this is selected from the menu.

	The quadrilateral mesh generator does not strictly create only quadrilateral elements. In places of the geometry where it judges it as necessary, it can also create triangular elements.

Then enter the properties for the quadrilateral meshing operation using the following sections:

Define the boundaries (3D) or domains (2D) where you want to create an unstructured quad mesh. Choose the level of the geometry from the list:

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Choose (3D) or (2D) to specify the geometric entities for which you want to create an unstructured quad mesh. Choose in the list to select the boundaries or domains in the window or choose (3D) or (2D) to select all boundaries or all domains.

To scale the geometry during the meshing operation, change the x-scale, y-scale, and z-scale in 3D to positive real numbers. If any of the scale factors are not equal to one, the software scales the geometry in the x, y, and z directions before meshing; after meshing, it restores the geometry and mesh to fit the original size. The scale factors make it possible to generate meshes that are anisotropic. They are also useful if the mesh generator creates many elements due to a thin geometry or if the mesh generation fails due to large aspect ratios in the geometry.

Select the check box to smooth the transition in element size across removed control entities. You can specify the number of smoothing iterations in the field. In the field you can specify the maximum element depth, from the boundary layer interface, for the mesh points to be smoothed.

From the list, choose the tessellation method to use for creating an unstructured quadrilateral mesh:

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Select (the default) to make the mesh generator determine the best algorithm to use for each domain.

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Select to use the algorithm available in version 5.2 and earlier versions of COMSOL Multiphysics.

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Select to use the algorithm available in version 5.2a of COMSOL Multiphysics, which, in addition to earlier versions of the free quad algorithm, has support for templates.