nTopology 3.24 is here! This release features our new Mesh Quality (Beta) block that gives the metrics for orthogonality, skewness, composite mesh quality and intersecting triangles for an FE mesh. This release has significant usage improvements to usability and performance that solves the errors the users were facing. As with every release, nTopology’s dedicated support team is ready to answer your questions. Please visit support.ntopology.com to gain access to helpful tutorials and support articles.

• Mesh Quality (Beta)

• Block Updates

• Usage Improvements

• Bug Fixes

Mesh Quality (Beta)

• A new beta block has been added to compute mesh quality metrics relevant for simulation analysis.
  • Location: Beta > Simulation
  • Description: Computes Mesh Quality metrics relevant for simulation. Available metrics include orthogonality, skewness, composite mesh quality, and intersecting triangles.
    • Input # 1: Mesh
      • Type: FE Mesh, Volume Mesh, or Mesh (three available overloads)
      • Description: The Mesh to be analyzed
    • Input # 2: Check intersections
      • Type: Bool
      • Description: Calculate intersecting triangles. Enabling this option will result in the block taking longer to evaluate.
  • Output: Mesh Quality

• This block is useful if the given Volume Mesh or (surface) Mesh will be used to create a downstream FE Mesh. The block has overloads for FE Mesh, (surface) Mesh, or Volume Mesh.

• Available metrics include orthogonality, skewness, composite mesh quality, and intersecting triangles. The HUD also features a mix and max slider to view elements within the selected range to easily identify specific elements that may cause issues solving the simulation analysis and getting accurate results.

• Please note that the “Check intersections” option needs to be checked in the block to view intersecting elements. This is because the compute time may increase significantly for mesh models with a high number of elements.

Block Updates

• The Extract Volume Mesh Boundary block has been deprecated because you can now retrieve the mesh boundary (i.e. surface mesh) directly from the Volume Mesh property panel.

Usage Improvements

• Users now can specify multiple load cases for topology optimization where the displacement restraints vary across load cases. The displacement restraints had to be identical across all load cases in prior releases. Removing this restriction allows you to analyze a broader set of real life loading conditions on your part. Please note that displacement restraints are still required to be homogeneous (i.e., zero).
• We improved the sorting algorithm of Slice Body block. We have seen the block running up to 3x faster in our test cases.

Bug Fixes

• We fixed an issue where files containing the deprecated Sharpen Mesh (Beta) block would be prevented from opening in version 3.23.3.
• We fixed an issue where text list inputs are not displayed in the notebook after the nTopology Command Line saves the file.
• We fixed an issue where dragging in an Element Pro Rule file from the Windows File Explorer would cause nTopology to unexpectedly exit.
• We fixed a minor issue where selecting the “FE Boundary by Flood Fill” command from right-clicking a face in the viewport would turn off the wireframe display for non-variable FE and regular meshes.
• We fixed an issue where the “What’s New” button would not redirect to the proper webpage when using a local license.
• We fixed an issue with variables containing nested blocks having inconsistent visibility behavior.
• We fixed an issue where Beta types were available for selection when the “Show beta blocks” setting was turned off.
• We fixed an issue where Beta blocks were available for selection as block overloads when the “Show beta blocks” setting was turned off.
• We fixed an issue in the CAD Body from Quad Mesh block that was mistakenly reporting that the input Mesh had disjointed components and not allowing you to run the block. You may have encountered this when trying to create a CAD Body from a complex quad mesh that had issues such as self-intersections and non-manifold vertices. Now the CAD Body from Quad Mesh correctly reports disjointed components. If you encountered this error you can try to re-run the block. The quad mesh you provide must be vertex and edge manifold. Self-intersections are allowed, however the resulting CAD Body might have issues such as self-intersecting or missing faces.
• We fixed an issue when pressure is applied to any surface mesh. The Pressure block was not transferring the correct load to the mesh. The block has been corrected and versioned to 1.2.0. Update this block to the latest version to ensure correct pressure field evaluation on shell meshes.