Simulation Mesh Tip

One good technique to have in your bag of tricks for SOLIDWORKS Simulation is how to mesh a failed part or body.

If you have a study that has at least one part that fails to mesh, you can use a mesh control on the failed part to refine the mesh. In order to choose an initial size for the mesh control, try the following:

Open the failed part on its own and start a study on it. If it is a failed body in a multibody part, open the part and suppress all the other bodies and start a study.

1. This new study is just for getting the mesh size. Go straight to the mesh, hit the reset button and try to mesh this single part/body.
2. If it successfully meshes, take note of the mesh size and go back to your main study.
3. Start a mesh control on the body in question with the size found in the previous test.
4. Make sure the global mesh has the mesh control in the min/max range.

This technique will often be good enough to get you to proceed with your mesh, but at the very least it should give you a ballpark number for how fine a mesh you need.