STAR-CCM+ contains tools which can be used to help prepare the starting surface geometry so that a high-quality volume mesh can be created from it. Depending on the initial quality of the starting surface, the following options are available in order to improve the triangulation of the surface and/or include feature curves:
The automatic and hand based feature extraction and editing tools allow feature curves to be defined for the geometry. Feature curves are primarily needed for two purposes. They are:
It is also possible to repair surfaces manually.
Where having sharp edges in the final volume mesh is considered critical, then including feature curves is essential. All features marked with an feature curve will always be preserved. Additionally, when you want to close a hole or zip mismatched surface edges, feature curves are used to indicate the area of interest prior to the fixing process being carried out.
The surface wrapper is used in instances when the imported geometry is of extremely poor quality (intersecting surfaces, holes, gaps etc) and not directly usable for volume meshing. The result of a surface wrapping operation is a closed (watertight) surface but which may contain poor quality triangulation.
The surface remesher is used to re-triangulate a closed starting surface so that a higher quality surface can be obtained. It is typically used in conjunction with the surface wrapper or to improve the quality of STL data or other poor quality closed surfaces.
The hole filler can be used to locally fill a hole in the surface with a triangulated planar surface. This is useful in closing off large areas so that the surface wrapper or surface remesher can be used to further improve the overall quality of the starting surface.
The edge zipper is useful for closing surfaces that have edges in close proximity but are not physically joined together. This is typical of surface data that would be used for the surface remesher.