Problem with quad meshing

[PabloEspinoza]

Hello,
I've been working with a staged model with a complex geometry (tailings dam). I've drawn all the stages as quadrilaterals, but when I try to quad mesh the geometry, I get some triangles in the model. How can I get rid of them?
I'm attaching a couple of photos of my model.

Also, I'd like to know if it's possible to import a mesh in STKO from another pre processor software (such as gmsh) as a geometry. I've been looking for a way to convert mesh file formats (.stl, .vtk, .wrl) to geometry file formats, so I can import it to STKO, (iges, step, brep) but I could't find any that works for quad meshes.

Thank you

[Clarabella]

Dear user,
To obtain structured mesh (quad) you need to have the surfaces closed by 4 edges and if you check your model you have some surfaces closed by more than 4 edges.
Remember that for structured meshes, you always have to be sure to have the surfaces closed by 4 edges.
Regarding the mesh import, it would be too costly for large models, because you would have a geometry for each mesh.

[pabloespinoz]

Thank you Clarabella for your reply.

I've changed the geometry as you said and I'm getting all quads now.

Unfortunately, I'm getting a high densification of the elements at some parts of my model. I've tried changing the edge seeds at the troubled zones but doesn't seem to help. Also I Tried changing to a unstructured mesh to some surfaces but I get triangular elements.

[STKO Team]

Changing the edge seed in those thiny surfaces won't help you, because the maximum mesh size will always be at least equal to the size of the surface.
The option you have is to create trasition zones, but it takes knowledge in preparing a good model that is suitable for structured meshing.

Probably you cut your soil surface into too many unecessary pieces. Try to post a sketch of what should be your soil model, so that we can help you in building a clean model for it.

[PabloEspinoza]

Okay. So I attached the a sketch of the model I'm trying to build.

Those spikes at the top of the latest stages of the tailings dam are causing me a lot of trouble. Sadly, I can't get rid of them because they are close to the max deformation zones of the dam at the very top.

I added colors to make the different soil materials more noticeable, and the intermediate lines at the green section are just to represent some stages.

Hope you can help me. Thank you

Kind regards

[STKO Team]

Please and us the SCD file of the attached picture

[PabloEspinoza]

It won't let me attach the model with the scd extension in this forum, so I uploaded it to google drive. Here's the link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GR-zWf ... sp=sharing

EDIT: attached model in zip file

[STKO Team]

It won't let me attach the model with the scd extension in this forum

.

Yes, this is a known limitation. Next time you can first zip your SCD file, and then attach the zip file. We will have a look as soon as possible