Adhering to User Preferences with Entity Selection

It is often a cumbersome task to select the entities that ought to be modified individually. But with Fidelity Pointwise, every aspect of a CFD grid can be manipulated. It has tools beyond the traditional point-and-click to help users quickly select and work with objects individually and collectively for quick and efficient management of various entities.

Figure 1. The landing gear geometry provided for the BANC III workshop had several complex features and thousands of entities in the final mesh.

The different selection methods in Fidelity Pointwise include:

• Selection Masks
• Point-and-Click Features
• Select Adjacent Entities
• Layers
• Groups
• Selecting via the List Panel

Selection Masks

Sometimes the user wishes to select all types of entities, and at other times, only a specific selection is preferred. To accommodate the different user preferences, the Masks toolbar in Fidelity Pointwise allows controlling the selection process. To expedite switching between various masks (i.e., switching between selecting connectors and domains), the user can either select the mask in the toolbar (seen on the far left in Figure 2) or use the accelerators. Further, the user can specify many specific criteria via the Select, Mask option. This flexibility can be useful for selecting a particular type of domain – a domain that has been refined with an elliptic solver, a structured or unstructured domain, etc.

Figure 2. The select menu has a number of useful commands to improve the efficiency of the meshing workflow.

Point-and-Click Features

To interactively isolate only a particular entity that is clearly visible on-screen, the mouse will be the most straightforward and intuitive selection method in Fidelity Pointwise. Suppose the selection mask is set to domains (by pressing F10), and the user clicks on a domain, then the selected domain will be highlighted and is actionable. The mouse can be used to select multiple entities in proximity using Box Selection. When the user clicks and drags the mouse over the entities to select, Fidelity Pointwise defaults to select all masked entities that are inside or touched by the red box shown on the screen (as illustrated in Figure 3).

Figure 3. A selection box is shown on-screen when you click and drag.

Select Adjacent

The Select Adjacent command is another useful selection feature in Fidelity Pointwise. By default, this command (Ctrl+Shift+N) selects all entities directly connected to the currently selected entity. The Select All Adjacent command (Ctrl+Shift+A) selects all topologically connected entities. That is, if a domain is selected and the Select Adjacent command is specified. Then all domains sharing an edge with the selection will be recursively added to the selection until all domains connected to the initial domain are selected.

Figure 4. In conjunction with Angle Limits, the Select All Adjacent command can select entities that quickly form a common face.

Fidelity Pointwise also has an Angle Limit feature that can be used in conjunction with the Select Adjacent and Select All Adjacent commands. By specifying an Angle Limit in the toolbar, the adjacent selection to domains/connectors with normal vectors that differ by less than the specified value can be restricted. Suppose the user wishes to select the underbody of the landing gear assembly, as seen in Figure 4. When an Angle Limit of 10 degrees is specified, the entire underbody can be rapidly selected by selecting any of the constituent domains of the underbody and executing the Select All Adjacent command.

Layers

Figure 5. The Layers panel allows the compartmentalization of a project and rapidly adds all layer components to the current selection.

Suppose the user frequently works with a collection of entities that form a subset of the total project. In that case, the work can be placed in Layers so that portion of the mesh can be isolated, freeing up graphical resources and reducing the complexity of the adjusted model. By isolating a layer, all other entities are hidden from view (and selection), making it very easy to select all entities within a single layer either with Ctrl+A or by clicking the “Add To Selection” button shown in Figure 5.

Groups

Creating a Group for rapid selection will be helpful if several disjoint entities of the same type (connector, domain, etc.) spread throughout a model (for example, structured domains to diagonalize on trailing edges) are frequently selected. All the entities can be selected with one click by turning on the Groups mask and selecting the Group from the List panel. If the user wants to select everything currently visible and masked but not included in the current selection, this can be done very easily by toggling the selection (Ctrl+T).

Selecting Through the List Panel

Another useful selection method is the List panel. Suppose the user wants to select all connectors with a dimension of 2. Click the third column heading to sort by dimension and drag over the connectors with dimension 2 (Figure 6).

Figure 6. Selection can also be done in the List Panel.

The multiple selection methods are just one example of how Fidelity Pointwise is designed to maximize user efficiency and provide tools to realize high-quality grids for your computational fluid dynamics (CFD) needs. If you want to see what else Fidelity Pointwise can do to help improve your preprocessing workflow, request a demo today!

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Watch this Tutorial Tuesday video on Fidelity Pointwise Entity Selection to make your meshing more efficient: