Well gents and such here is my problem, currently im trying to mesh a high number of spheres within a cylinder. There will be a fluid that will be flowing through the cylinder around the spheres. So what I tried was to create a new volume by subtracting the spheres' volumes away from the cylinder's volume. My problem now is trying to mesh this new volume(a holey cylinder). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Oh and I'm a first time user so don't be scared to go into detail.

dear jesse My name is Gede. What kind of grid generator program did you used? The solution is depend on the program. Usually, I use Gambit for the grid generator. For that configuration of yours, I prefer to construct surfaces than substracting volumes. And build mapping connections between the surfaces. Because the mapping connections will provide easier grid topology although you will deal with numbers of surfaces.

I'm generating the spheres with a make shift iges file generator that will only create the spheres. So the spheres are my starting point. I've been using gambit/tgrid mostly, but have been playing with other means. I still haven't had much success with it.

Could you explain briefly how to build mapping connections. I might be able to remove the spheres from the cylinder volume, mesh the newly created "holes" faces and then proceed using your method.

Thanks

For simplicity, let's view the 2-D of your problem. I think it would look like a circle inside a long rectangular. For that kind of configuration, usually, I separate the region between the circle and the rectangular into six small regions. The division is done by draw 6 auxilliary lines. First three lines, are drawn from the zero degree of the circle to: the middle of the rectangular front edge , the top and bottom of the rectangular perpendicular to the first one. The last three lines, are similar to the first but are drawn from the 180 degree of the circle. So, now you have 6 region of mapping connections instead of 1 large tgrid zone if you use the substract procedure.

For 3 dimensionality, you can do the similar way. Please try.