The CompSim-Geometry and Meshing Team is pleased to announce Version 16.12 of the Cubit® Geometry and Mesh Generation Toolkit. The following is a sampling of new capabilities and improvements introduced in Cubit® 16.12. See the Cubit® 16.12 Release Notes for a complete list, which includes many resolved user tickets and new capabilities developed in support of the Next Generation Simulation (NGS) initiative.
What’s New…
Geometry Preparation Capabilities
- A new reduce bolt patch command is one of several options for reducing 3D fastener geometry for use in analysis. This new option uses Shigley frustum method to replace 3D bolt geometry with 2D concentric circular surfaces. Sidesets are automatically applied to these surfaces, representing preload forces for analysis purposes.
- Cubit’s ability to split fillet surfaces now follows the curvature in creating ideal results.
- The simplify command for compositing surfaces now supports merged surfaces in addition to external surfaces.
Tri Meshing Robustness and Higher-order Tet10 Enhancements
- Triangle meshing robustness has been improved, and a correct mesh can now be produced in a few specific combinations of compositing and merging surfaces.
- Users can now toggle the midnode_correction option during import mesh geometry command, allowing control on straightening edges based on the quality of high-order TET10 elements.
- Equivalencing nodes is now more robust and faster after importing multiple mesh files as free mesh, and higher-order nodes are now equivalenced when they exist.
Usability Improvements
- A new right-click ‘select between’ option selects all surfaces between the two specified surfaces, which can be used in identifying cavities for EM analyses. If a single surface is specified, a new ‘select enclosure’ option will select all connected surfaces, forming a water-tight enclosure, which can be used in TF or EM analyses.
- Various enhancements made to ABAQUS export include writing additional element sets and node sets based on groups, specifying coordinate frames, and new ‘instance_per_block’ option. These additions will streamline using Cubit® with LANL’s MCNP.
- When running Sculpt on Linux and macOS, the version of OpenMPI used is no longer restricted to version 4.0. This removed restriction may be useful if targeting a specific hardware that the distribution-included OpenMPI doesn’t support.
- Extended parsing of blocks, nodesets, and sidesets in mesh is now fully supported. For example, one can get sidesets using a ‘sideset in face 40’ syntax or get blocks using a ‘block in hex 32’ syntax.
How to Get it…
Cubit® is available to anyone on the Sandia LANs. Cubit® 16.12 will now run automatically from the Linux command prompt, replacing Cubit® 16.10. It is also licensed free of charge for government use outside of Sandia. If you are a current Cubit® licensed user, you may get Cubit® 16.12 by visiting and following the instructions on the Cubit® Download page. See Cubit® Licensing for information on obtaining a license.
How You Can Learn More…
The Cubit® 16.12 Release Notes provide a description of all the new features included in Cubit® 16.12. For detailed information follow the links to the online users manual.
Classroom tutorials are advertised on the Cubit® Tutorial Webpage, where you can also find a download for self-guided tutorials.
For more information contact, Cubit® Product Owner Ryan Viertel.