Mechanical Meshing: Crashing and dp0 files

- November 2, 2021 at 5:06 pm
  
  pbuelow
  Subscriber
  
  In attempting to generate a large mesh containing approx. 48 million elements, ANSYS Mechanical crashes, closing graphics user interface and all data is lost. The total time elapsed under meshing was approx. 5 hours before Mechanical closed/crashed (computer was not monitored during the event). Under the workbench files, and within the extbf{session-files} directory 'journal1-crashed.wbjn' file is available.
  workbench_files/dp0/sys/MECH/
  Under the above file path, no mechanical mesh files are being created. The crash does not occur if periodic manual saves are performed when generating mesh on subsections of the geometry at a time. This method limits our efficiency.
- November 11, 2021 at 12:02 am
  
  Sheldon Imaoka
  Ansys Employee
  
  After you manually mesh the subsections, what is the final size of the Workbench project?
  Also, how much physical RAM do you have on the machine that you are using? Similarly, how much free disk space do you have on the C: drive? Are there any other analyses being run when you are meshing?
  Lastly, is this a multibody part, or do you have separate bodies in the assembly?
  In Mechanical, under "File -> Options...", go to "Meshing -> Meshing" and enter "1" for "Number of CPUs for Parallel Part Meshing" - can you try this to see if it works? If you have many cores but not enough RAM, the program may try to mesh multiple parts in parallel at once, and if there's no enough memory, a crash may occur. By setting this to "1", it makes the meshing process slower, but it may prevent too many parts from being meshed and taking up more memory (physical RAM) than is available. If using "1" core at a time works, you can try increasing this to "2", for example, to speed things up a little more, but you should try "1" first to see if this is the cause of your crash.
  Regards Sheldon