Griddle - Version 2.0 -Advanced Meshing Tools for Numerical Modeling

Using Rhino tools, you can easily:

• Create and work with points, point clouds, curves, surfaces, meshes, and solids.
• Extrude complex tunnel profiles and paths.
• Define construction stages.
• Import project geometries from other formats (e.g., DXF, DWG, etc.).
• Add structural element (support) geometry for liners, piles, concrete reinforcement, and rockbolts using offsets, arrays, and rail tools. Export these as DXFs and import directly into FLAC3D or 3DEC via the model pane.
• And much more…

With Griddle you can quickly mesh very complex geologies and engineering structures:

• Incorporate natural structures such as faults and joints. These structures, including free internal surfaces, are automatically retained as grid faces in FLAC3D and as joints in 3DEC models, making it easy to identify them for property or interface assignment.
• Easily define geotechnical units.
• Extrude surface topography to quickly form high-quality model domains.
• Intersect and refine surface meshes, ensuring high-quality conformal meshes.
• Repair poor-quality meshes to prepare them for volume meshing.
• Create unstructured volume meshes to fill watertight domains and/or structured volume meshes to fill Rhino solids.
• Assign names to objects, which are transferred as group names in FLAC3D and 3DEC.
• And much more…

Griddle creates structured hexahedral volume meshes with meshing tool BlockRanger (BR) and unstructured tetrahedral or hex-dominant volume meshes with meshing tool GVol. A structured mesh is characterized by the regular connectivity between elements and typically has well-shaped elements, whereas an unstructured mesh is identified by irregular connectivity. Structured meshes provide comparatively more accurate results for stress calculations than unstructured meshes. However, unstructured meshes are typically much faster to generate; they can be created for geometry of any complexity, and they are more effective for modeling sharper edges and corners.

BlockRanger

• BlockRanger engine is more robust and able to mesh solids with concave surfaces and even solids with certain internal issues (e.g., not properly connected solid nodes/edges).
• New option to automatically create boundary surface meshes in Rhino corresponding to the meshed solid. This surface mesh can later be used to create unstructured mesh around it (e.g., structured volume mesh within a tunnel and unstructured volume mesh around it).

New output formats:

• 3DEC 7.0 Text (ASCII) or binary output
• FLAC3D binary output
• CSV file

GInt

• Surface mesh intersector engine is faster and more robust.
• New default option to keep intersected meshes separate and preserve all individual mesh information (the option can be set to merge intersected meshes as in previous Griddle version).
• New option to separate intersected faces from any other meshes. This allows users to readily see which faces were changed (i.e., intersected) so additional operations can be performed on them.

GSurf

• Surface remesher engine is faster and more robust.
• New default option to keep remeshed meshes separate and preserve all individual mesh information (the option can be set to merge remeshed meshes as in previous Griddle version).
• More meshing controls:
• gradation;
• weight on quadrilaterals;
• element shape quality; and
• optimization level.
• Local mesh size can be specified via URL field or name field. Using the URL field is more convenient as it allows preserving mesh names, which are transferred to the volume mesh.
• Improved logic for hard edges and hard nodes to provide precise control of local element sizes.

GVol

• The volume mesher engine is faster and more robust.
• Automatic checks for surface mesh problems before meshing.
• More meshing controls:
• element target size;
• size gradation;
• element shape quality; and
• optimization level.
• New output formats:
• 3DEC 7.0
• Text (ASCII) or Binary output.
• Rigid or Deformable blocks format.
• FLAC3D binary file, which is significantly faster than ASCII output.
• CSV file.

GExtract

• Extract multiple meshes at once based on angle and non-manifold intersections (“Mesh Explode”).
• Extract all boundary faces.
• Extract all non-manifold faces (i.e., faces along non-manifold intersections).
• Extract sub-meshes within a user-defined solid.

POWERFUL

• Generate meshes for both continuum and discrete element models
• Integrated within Rhinoceros 3D, a powerful CAD program for creating and modifying surfaces, solids, and meshes
• Produce different types of volume meshes to fit your goals:
  • Structured hexahedral meshes for accurate stress calculations
  • Unstructured tetrahedral meshes when working with the most complex geometries and generating 3DEC bonded-block-models (BBM)
  • Unstructured Hex-dominant meshes as a hybrid approach to maximize the volume fraction of hexahedral elements
• Preserve surface mesh overall shapes and properties through the process of mesh intersection and remeshing
• Built-in Rhino 3D mesh repair tools and new Griddle automated mesh repair functionality
• Named Rhino 3D objects are included in the FLAC3D or 3DEC grid files as groups, making it easy to reference joints, faults, and other geotechnical domains in Itasca’s software
• Control local mesh resolution for surface meshes by specifying local mesh size, hard edges or hard nodes
• Control the gradation of element sizes (e.g., from small to big) in surface and volume meshes
• Extract, extend and/or extrude surface meshes using Griddle tools to quickly and efficiently prepare surface meshes for remeshing and volume meshing with desired parameters
• Customize, parameterize, and fully automate Rhino and Griddle using powerful macros, Visual Basic, and Python scripting
• Export meshes to non-Itasca, Finite Element software formats

EFFICIENT

• Now able to export FLAC3D 7 and 3DEC 7 as binary grid files for smaller sizes and faster loading.
• Create 3DEC 7 meshes either using Rigid or Deformable block format.
• Faster and more robust surface and volume meshing engines.
• Preserve initial surface/polysurface/mesh information and automatically transfer names of Rhino objects as groups in FLAC3D and 3DEC.
• Efficiently prepare surface meshes and fix issues using GHeal, GExtract, GExtend, and/or GExtrude.

RELIABLE

• Easily create high-quality meshes in various formats.
• Automatically check for possible meshing issues before volume meshing.
• Volume mesher GVol highlights problematic areas that may require additional clean-up or fixing.
• Griddle generates element reports defining the types and fractions of elements.
• Griddle now has automated mesh repair tools with powerful features exceeding Rhino capabilities.
• Griddle’s surface mesh intersector (GInt) ensures conformal meshes across the geometry.

PROVEN

• Since being commercially released in 2015, Griddle has been used by Itasca engineers and scientists in their work often when dealing with the most complex geometries and structures.
• Used worldwide by a wide variety of industries, universities, and government agencies.

FLEXIBLE

• Multiple types of surface remeshing and volume meshing elements (tetrahedral, hexahedral, and hex-dominant).
• Rhino 3D has a large number of point, line/curve, surface, solid, and mesh drafting tools that are easy to use.
• Customize, parameterize, and automate Rhino and Griddle using powerful macros, Visual Basic, and Python scripting.
• Rhino 3D imports/exports a large variety of CAD file formats.
• Optional FLAC3D 7 and 3DEC 7 ASCII format for grid files, making it easier to modify or customize grid files.
• Standard license is portable between computers and users.
• Multiple seat network licenses available.
• Monthly and annual leases available.

ECONOMICAL

• No annual maintenance fees.
• Standard license is portable between computers and users.
• Monthly and annual leases are available.