Before meshing, you can check a part’s geometry for small features that might fail to mesh such as short edges, narrow faces, small faces, sharp corners. The SOLIDWORKS Geometry Analysis utility identifies these features.
To run Geometry Analysis for a part:
- Click Geometry Analysis
(Tools toolbar) or .Geometry Analysis identifies these entities:
sliver faces, small faces, short edges, knife (sharp) edges and vertices, discontinuous edges and faces.
For more information about these entities, see SOLIDWORKS Online Help: Geometry Analysis Options.
-
You can specify values of control parameters to identify these geometric entities. For example, you can specify the maximum length for short edges. As a general rule, the length value for all three Insignificant geometry parameters (short edges, small faces, sliver faces) should be the same.
The Geometry Analysis function automatically detects all insignificant geometry features classified by type. Review the detected features and try to resolve the underlying modeling issues.
-
For example, measure the shortest significant edge on your model. For some models, the shortest significant edge is the plate's thickness, a chamfer, or a hole diameter. Divide this length value by two. Enter this new value as the control parameter for Edge Length, All Edge lengths and Face Width values.
For sharp angles, the default 5 deg value is fine for most cases.
- If you cannot remove some small features from the geometry, use a tolerance value for meshing slightly higher than their size.
If the distance between two nodes is smaller than this tolerance value, the mesher merges these nodes and meshing is successful.