Visualizing Meshes and Groups

This task shows you how to change the visualization type, that means that you can visualize both the mesh and the content of a group (elements included in a group). The default visualization type is the visualization by mesh parts, that means that you can only see the mesh of mesh parts. You can activate or deactivate the group visualization in the same way as the mesh part visualization. To know more about groups, see Creating Groups under a Mesh Part.
Group visualization particularly lets you see groups you have created. It is useful in an analysis assembly context because group visualization stays even if you change of analysis, opposite to other analysis as quality, orientation.

In addition to the group visualization type, you can also change the graphic attributes of a group using the Properties contextual menu or the Graphic Properties toolbar.

You can only visualize elements contained in a group (nodes, edges or faces of elements contained in a group cannot be visualized).
To visualize the result of a group, this group must be updated. Each time you modify a group, you have to update it to visualize the correct result of the group. If not, this group appears in low intensity.
Group representation is not impacted by the cutting plane command in approximate mode.
Visualization by Mesh Parts and Visualization by Groups commands are not available in the Surface Mesher workshop and in the Advanced Surface Mesher workshop.

Open the sample33.CATAnalysis document from the samples directory.

Update the Groups.1 set. To do this, right-click Groups.1 and select Update All Groups.

Click Visualization by Groups in the Mesh Visualization Tools toolbar.

The meshes and the content of the groups are visualized.

For a better visualization, you can either modify the graphic properties of the groups and the mesh parts or hide the meshes of each mesh part.

Right-click Nodes and Elements and select Hide/Show Mesh to hide the mesh for all mesh parts belonging to the Nodes and Elements set.

You can now visualize only the content of each group:
Right-click Nodes and Elements and select Hide/Show Mesh to show the mesh for all mesh parts belonging to the Nodes and Elements set.

Right-click Box Group.2 in the specification tree and select Properties.

The Properties dialog box appears to let you modify the group graphic properties.
To know more about graphic Properties, refer to Displaying and Editing Graphic Properties in the Infrastructure User's Guide.

You can also use the Graphic Properties toolbar to modify the graphic properties of the group.
To know more, refer to Using the Graphic Properties toolbar in the Infrastructure User's Guide.

Select a color in the Color list of the Graphic tab.

The elements contained in the Box Group.2 group are visualized.
Modify the color of Box Group.1 and Box Group.2.
Right-click Nodes and Elements and select Hide/Show Mesh to hide the mesh for all mesh parts belonging to the Nodes and Elements set.
Right-click Nodes and Elements and select Hide/Show Mesh to show the mesh for all mesh parts belonging to the Nodes and Elements set.
Click Visualization by Mesh Parts in the Mesh Visualization Tools toolbar to deactivate the group visualization.

The default visualization type is activated.