The Mesh () nodes enable the discretization of the geometry into small units of simple shapes, referred to as mesh elements.

A mesh is the result of building a meshing sequence. A meshing sequence corresponding to a geometry consists of Meshing Operations and Attributes. The attribute nodes store properties that are used by the operation nodes when creating the mesh.

Building an operation node creates or modifies the mesh on the part of the geometry defined by the operation node’s selection. Some of the operation nodes use properties defined by attribute nodes; for example, the Free Tetrahedral node reads properties from the Distribution and Size attribute nodes. If you choose to import a mesh you have access to a different set of operations (see Creating or Modifying Entities of Imported Meshes).

An attribute node contains properties defined on a selection. You can add an attribute as a node in the meshing sequence (this is referred to as a global attribute node) or add it as a node under an operation node (a local attribute node). Global attribute nodes are used by operation nodes when building the meshing sequence. Local attribute nodes are only used by the owning operation node.

The Graphics Window shows the resulting mesh from the nodes that have been built. The result of subsequent nodes is not visible. The last built node becomes the current node and appears with a quadratic frame around the node’s icon (). The frame is green if the node and all preceding nodes are built; that is, the mesh in the Graphics window is up to date. The frame is yellow if the node or some preceding node has been edited since the node was built and needs to be rebuilt ().