3 \page building_compounds_page Building Compound Meshes
5 \n Compound Mesh is a combination of several meshes. All elements and
6 groups present in input meshes are present in the compound
7 mesh. However, it does not use geometry or hypotheses of the initial meshes.
8 The links between the input meshes and the compound mesh are not
9 supported, consequently the modification of an input mesh does not lead to
10 the update of the compound mesh.
12 <em>To Build a compound mesh:</em>
15 From the \b Mesh menu select <b>Build Compound</b> or click <em>"Build
16 Compound Mesh"</em> button in the toolbar.
18 \image html image161.png
19 <center><em>"Build Compound Mesh" button</em></center>
22 The following dialog box will appear:
24 \image html buildcompound.png
28 <li>\b Name - allows selecting the name of the resulting \b Compound mesh.</li>
29 <li><b>Meshes, sub-meshes, groups</b> - allows selecting the meshes,
30 sub-meshes and groups to be concatenated. They can be
31 chosen in the Object Browser while holding \b Ctrl button.</li>
32 <li><b>Processing identical groups</b> - allows selecting the method
33 of processing the namesake groups existing in the input meshes.
34 They can be either <ul>
35 <li>\b United - all elements of \em Group1 \em of Mesh_1 and \em Group1 of \em Mesh_2
36 become the elements of \em Group1 of the \em Compound_Mesh, or</li>
37 <li>\b Renamed - \em Group1 of \em Mesh_1 becomes \em Group1_1 and \em Group1 of \em Mesh_2
38 becomes \em Group1_2.</li>
40 See \ref grouping_elements_page "Creating Groups" for more information
42 <li><b>Create groups from input objects</b> check-box permits to
43 automatically create groups corresponding to every initial mesh.
45 \image html buildcompound_groups.png "Groups created from input meshes 'Box_large' and 'Box_small'"
48 <li>You can choose to additionally
49 \ref merging_nodes_page "Merge coincident nodes"
50 \ref merging_elements_page "and elements" in the compound mesh, in
51 which case it is possible to define the \b Tolerance for this
55 \image html image160.gif "Example of a compound of two meshed cubes"
57 <b>See Also</b> a sample
58 \ref tui_building_compound "TUI Example of building compounds."