Select Mesh Faces and Edges

Direct selection of mesh faces and edges is available in some tools, as well as their individual selection modes which are called Facets and FE Edges, respectively.

Mesh faces and edges are calculated on displayed mesh based on a break angle value. You can adjust the break angle dynamically using Alt + Scroll. You can also adjust it via the Advanced Selection dialog by clicking or pressing Spacebar where the following additional options are also available.
  • When selecting faces, options are available to ignore mesh intersections, plot element boundaries, or restrict face selection to only shell or solid meshes.
  • When selecting edges, options are available to ignore mesh intersections, plot elements, or restrict the edge selection to only free edges or full loops.

It is important to note that these special selection types are provided as conveniences and are not native HyperMesh entities (like nodes or elements are), and as such have the following restrictions and considerations:

  • The topology of mesh faces and edges has to be calculated on-the-fly each time their selection is requested, so hovering or selecting large mesh areas can produce delays in calculating the resulting selection.
  • When selecting faces or individual facets, advanced selection operations are available (for example: select adjacent, reverse, by face, by path, and so on) which rely on their underlying elements. As such, any advanced selection operation performed on faces or facets considers their current base elements as fully selected (including all outside faces of 3D elements). The same applies to saving and retrieving selections via the right-click menu.
  • When selecting individual facets, performing graphical window selections of a large number of facets can have a significant performance cost. For such scenarios, choosing elements or nodes as the selection type is recommended for optimal performance.
  • Switching the selection type from mesh faces and edges to their underlying nodes or elements is supported in all tools, however the reverse conversion (from faces or edges to nodes or elements) is only available in some tools.