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When I was meshing a helical coil, I've noticed these "cube" symbols located at the midpoint of a the block's edges:

Ansys ICEM CFD, Cube symbols on block edges

Blocks with these symbols tend to have a lot of strange/unpredictable behavior. In one instance, I noticed that one of these blocks had bends along the edge lines that I expected to always be straight.

This block was created by extruding the face below it along a helical curve.

Here is an image of the geometry and blocking:

Geometry & Blocking

What do these cube symbols mean, and can I replace these blocks with "regular" ones that always have straight edge lines?

Julian Grohmann
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1 Answers1

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If your geometry is curved, chances are it was meshed using higher order cells. Check out this article for more information.

The "cubes" at the edge centres would be additional nodes to define polynomial distribution of a quantity across a cell. Depending on the type, you can have additional nodes in the middle of edges, additionally in the middle of faces and there can also be one in the cell center.

Tomáš Létal
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  • Thanks! This is what I was looking for. Are you aware of any way to force Ansys to avoid higher order cells when extruding along a curve? – Julian Grohmann Mar 04 '23 at 18:20
  • I can do it only in Mechanical, there is linear or quadratic option, so maybe you can try to look for something similar in ICEM. – Tomáš Létal Mar 04 '23 at 19:16