Cubit Features
Geometry Preparation
Cubit has many tools to prepare geometry for meshing. It automatically cleans up many
cases of invalid geometry and topology when importing geometry models. You can collapse
small curves and surfaces, or extend them to fill gaps. You can add geometric primitives
to the model. You can do geometry boolean operations. To facilitate mesh generation, you
can cut volumes with various tools. Cubit imprints and merges geometry to allow conformal
meshing of complex assemblies.
Mesh Generation
Cubit has the following meshing algorithms:
- Mapped and sub-mapped meshing for 2D and 3D
- Sweeping for one-to-one and many-to-one
- Paving which is advancing front quad meshing
- Advancing front tri meshing
- Delaunay tet meshing (GSH3D by Simulog and INRIA)
- Hex mesh primitives
Cubit can automatically select an appropriate hex or quad mesh algorithm for many cases. It can also set up edge mesh sizing for you. After meshing, you can check several mesh quality metrics. You can smooth the mesh using Laplacian, Centroid-area Pull, Equipotential, Jacobian Optimization, Condition Number Optimization, Winslow, or Untangling. You can also refine the mesh globally or locally.
Boundary Conditions
Cubit supports sidesets, nodesets and element blocks for Exodus II, which can be used
for material, assignments, generic loads and other boundary conditions. Cubit also supports Abaqus, Fluent,
LS-Dyna, Nastran, and Patran boundary conditions. The boundary conditions can be visualized in
the graphics window.
User Interface
The user interface is cross platform and built using Qt. The main part of the interface
is the graphics window. This shows the model and allows you to interact with it. There
are a few components around the graphics window. The first is a hierarchical panel on the
right side to execute all the commands in Cubit. Next, on the left, is the object tree
and properties page. Along with the tree, there are a few power tools and the ITEM wizard.
The ITEM panel can be used to guide you through the geometry cleanup and meshing process.
On the bottom, is the command console that can be used to manually enter commands.
It also shows the text output from commands and any warnings or errors that occur. There is a
Python scripting tab as well. Cubit comes with an integrated HTML help browser.
Input/Output
Cubit supports the following formats:
- ACIS sat, sab: Geometry import/export
- Pro/E: geometry import/export
- Neutral formats: STEP, IGES
- Facet formats: STL, AVS, facet
- Exodus II: native mesh format
- Abaqus, Patran : mesh and boundary condition export.
- NASTRAN BDF, IDEAS Universal, Dyna3D, Fluent: mesh format export only
- Translators: Patran, Abaqus, Pro/E, IDEAS, Matlab, ANSYS and others.
Operating Systems
Cubit is available for Linux 32/64; Windows 32/64, including XP, Vista, 7; Mac OS X versions 10.5+ (32 bit only)