Collapse Entities
Use the Collapse Entities () operation to collapse boundaries or edges of a 3D mesh, as shown in Figure 8-30 and Figure 8-31. A domain without mesh can be collapsed if all surrounding surfaces are collapsed.
Figure 8-30: A short edge in the mesh is highlighted in blue (left). The image to the right shows the mesh after the edge has been collapsed.
Figure 8-31: A small boundary in the mesh is highlighted in blue (left). The image to the right shows the mesh after the boundary has been collapsed.
For more control over how boundaries are collapsed, use Merge Entities and specify the edges to keep and the edges to remove.
To collapse entities in a mesh, select one or several entities in the mesh, then:
Right-click in the Graphics window, and select Collapse Entities from the Cleanup and Repair menu. For more information, see The Graphics Context Menu.
In the Mesh toolbar, choose Collapse Entities from the Cleanup and Repair menu ().
Right-click the Mesh node and choose Collapse Entities from the Cleanup and Repair menu.
Enter the properties for the Collapse Entities node using the following sections:
Geometric Entity Selection
Select the geometric entity level from the Geometric entity level list. The possible choices are Entire geometry (the default), Boundary, or Edge. For Entire geometry, the selection below is not available.
Click the Active button to toggle between turning ON and OFF selections. Select the edges or boundaries to collapse from in the Graphics window.
Collapse Entities
Use the Maximum size setting to control the size of the edges or boundaries to collapse in the mesh. Choose Relative to enter a value in the Relative tolerance field. This value is relative to the length of the longest side of the mesh bounding box. Select Absolute to specify a value in the Absolute tolerance field. This value is determined by measuring the size of the bounding box as well as the smallest entities in the selection, with a maximum value set by the size of the bounding box. The maximum value is not taken into account if only one entity is selected. When the operation is built with either of the settings Automatic (the default) or Relative, the values in the Absolute tolerance field is automatically updated to correspond to the actually used tolerance. The value is also shown in the Information section.