Mesh on Rigid Bodies — Lesson 6

Why does the solver try to generate a mesh on rigid bodies in an RBD analysis?

Here are two instances during which the rigid dynamics solver tries to mesh the parts:

1. When you are doing rigid-flexible body dynamics; only the parts that are marked as flexible are meshed.

2. When you have any contacts defined in your model; the contact algorithm uses the mesh nodes as contact detection points so it creates a surface mesh on the faces that are included under contact/target scoping. If you don't have either of these things defined in your model, the rigid dynamics solver should not generate any mesh on the rigid bodies.