The hole filler can be used to close any arbitrary shaped hole using a planar surface. A hole is defined as a simple connected loop of free edges. Figure eight and multiple loops (one inside the other) must be simplified first using the manual surface repair tools before the hole filler can be used.
Before a hole can be filled, feature curves have to be defined in a continuous closed loop around the edge of the hole. The easiest way of doing this is by using the Mark Free Edges option when computing feature curves, although they can be added manually if preferred. Only the feature curves relating to the hole should be contained in the node. This is because all feature curves are used for hole filling, not just those that are defined on a free edge. Use the non-contiguous split option to separate out the feature curve sets beforehand if necessary or the edit tools to clean up the definition.
An example hole with the appropriate feature curve set is shown below:
To fill a hole, select the feature curve node name and right-click. In the pop-up menu select the Fill All Holes option:
All holes defined by the feature curves will be filled with a planar surface using the least number of triangular faces possible. An example is shown here.
The output for a successful hole fill is shown here:
A new boundary representing the filled hole is also created in the simulation tree and a new displayer containing the object is added to the current scene. The default name of the new boundary is Filled Holes.
The use of the hole filler usually results in poor quality triangles being produced in the area of the gap. For this reason, it is recommend that you apply the manual surface remesher to the new boundary faces in order to improve the triangulation quality prior to generating a volume mesh.
In instances when the feature curves do not form a closed loop or have extra feature curves intersecting the loop, the hole filler will fail and no surface will be produced. An example output showing when the hole filler is unsuccessful is shown here:
In this instance, use the manual add and edit tools to clean up the feature curve definition so that a closed loop is created and then run the hole filler again.