Filling holes of a Surface Mesh

This feature allows the user to fill the holes of a loaded and/or imported surface mesh in order to create a closed/water-tight mesh (see Figure 29) using the following process:

1. Select an open surface mesh from the list of meshes shown at the top left side of the window by clicking on its name. Alternatively, users can also select a mesh by using the selection mode on the Views toolbar and clicking on the mesh rendered on the screen.

2. Select one of the options from the Fill Surface Holes section:

   • Automatic Merge: the mesh patches created to fill the holes of the mesh will be automatically merged into the original mesh.

   • Patch as Mesh: Currently not available.

3. Click on the Apply button.

Figure 29 - Fill Surface Holes feature of the Pre-processing module

An example of this feature is shown in Figure 30. The image on the left side shows the initial surface mesh of drum with two holes. The image on the right side shows the resulting surface mesh after using the feature Fill Surface Holes using the option Automatic Merge.

Figure 30 - Example application of the Fill Surface Holes feature of the Pre-processing module. Left: Intial open surface mesh with holes. Right: Initial mesh where the holes haven been closed.

The generated closed/watertight mesh can be later used to generate a volume mesh. In order to save the changes conducted to the mesh, users should click the Save button located at the bottom of the Pre page.