Civil and building engineering structures always contain a number of points whose original coordinates must be preserved during the finite element meshing process. They are so-called "constraint" points, which may be located anywhere on the structure's boundary, as well as inside any component of the structure. It is most important that the points' locations are preserved during the meshing process, so in the generated mesh there always exists a node coinciding with every imposed constraint.

QUAD-SURFACE 2.8 has now that feature implemented: the user can apply as many constraints as necessary along the structure's boundaries, as well as anywhere inside any planar domain in the model. Such domains (for example, concrete slabs) often exist in models arising in the finite element analysis of civil and building engineering structures.

In the images below a simple example of such model is presented. The model consists of a number of planar and one half-cylinder components, with a number of constrains along the "floor" of the model. Several constraints are applied along the domain boundary: PINTLL1A and PINTLL1B along the segment from P000000 to P001400; PINTLT2A and PINTLT2B along the segment from P001400 to P171400 correspondingly. Also there are four internal constraints applied inside the domain: PINT1,...,PINT4. ("PINT" stands for "point internal").

As it can be seen, the generated mesh contains corresponding nodes exactly in the positions where the PINTs have been originally applied.

The new QUAD-SURFACE 2.8 product allows over one million elements generated, without any additional use of such external resources as temporary files on the hard drive or a necessity to interrupt other applications running at the same time.

Among other features, QUAD-SURFACE 2.8 allows:

• meshing of complex plate and shell structures in 3D space, consisting of flat, cylindrical, spherical components, surfaces of revolution and also general-case 3- and 4-edged patches;
• meshing of non-homogeneous domains, consisting of multiple plates and shells with different physical and/or geometrical properties;
• easily readable and convenient description of geometrical models;
• fully automatic processing, requiring no interference from the user.

Licensing, delivery and support.

QUAD-SURFACE is available with complete source codes and also an unlimited commercial license allowing incorporation of the codes into your own products. QUAD-SURFACE is written in ANSI C : it will compile and run on any Windows and UNIX platform, without changes to the source code, and can be included into any appllication written in C and/or C++. It is available on the no-royalties and no annual renewals basis: there is a one-off price for the full commercial license.

An example of mesh generated by QUAD-SURFACE on a surface of revolution can be found here. Also, please follow this link to see how QUAD-SURFACE can process tubular joints.