TEdit: A Distributed Tetrahedral Mesh Editor with Immediate Simulation Feedback D. Str ¨ oter 1 a , U. Krispel 2,3 b , J. S. Mueller-Roemer 1,4 c and D. W. Fellner 1,3,4 d 1 TU Darmstadt, Interactive Graphics Systems Group, Germany 2 Fraunhofer Austria Research GmbH, Austria 3 TU Graz, Institute of Computer Graphics and Knowledge Visualization, Austria 4 Fraunhofer IGD, Darmstadt, Germany Keywords: Computer Aided Design, Simulation Environments, Client Server Architectures, Massively Parallel and High-performance Simulations. Abstract: The cycle of computer aided design and verification via physics simulation is often burdened by the use of separate tools for modeling and simulation, which requires conversion between formats, e.g. meshing for finite element simulation. This separation is often unavoidable because the tools contain specific domain knowledge which is mandatory for the task, for example a specific CAD modeling suite. We propose a distributed appli- cation that allows interactive modification of tetrahedral meshes, derived from existing CAD models. It pro- vides immediate simulation feedback by offloading resource-intensive tasks onto multiple machines thereby enabling fast design cycles for individualized versions of mass-produced parts. 1 INTRODUCTION Due to the persistent high cost, 3D printing is still not an option for mass production. However, it is in- creasingly used for individualized versions of mass- produced parts (D., 2018), albeit limited to purely cosmetic parts. To create custom versions of parts with a mechanical function, simulations of the modi- fied part are required to ensure that it continues to ful- fill its function. However, the usual iterative product development cycle of modifying a part in computer- aided design (CAD), remeshing it, and simulating it in a computer-aided engineering (CAE) tool is uneco- nomic in this context. We present TEdit, a novel tetrahedral mesh edi- tor with immediate simulation feedback, i.e. without tool switches or manual intervention and with min- imal delay. By making use of the fact that high- quality tetrahedral meshes and corresponding sim- ulation load cases already exist for mass-produced parts, we significantly shorten the product develop- a https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2672-7377 b https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8984-635X c https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0712-0457 d https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7756-0901 ment cycle for customized parts. By directly editing the tetrahedral mesh—not the CAD model—and us- ing its triangular surface for printing, editing of the CAD model followed by full remeshing is avoided completely. GPU-accelerated simulation provides di- rect feedback (Sec. 2), while client hardware require- ments are minimized using a multi-tier, distributed client-server architecture (Sec. 3). We developed a set of tetrahedral mesh editing operations that aim to preserve mesh quality, while maintaining the se- mantic relationship between boundary triangles that originally formed a CAD surface or form a new, con- tiguous surface after an edit to improve user interac- tion (Sec. 4). 2 RELATED WORK Currently, there is little literature on tetrahedral mesh editing. Stoll et al. (Stoll et al., 2007) explore in- teractive shape editing of volumetric meshes using linear deformation with differential rotation updates. In order to enable intuitive interaction, they provide deformation-handles for users to grab. As our frame- work is designed for virtual prototyping, interaction Ströter, D., Krispel, U., Mueller-Roemer, J. and Fellner, D. TEdit: A Distributed Tetrahedral Mesh Editor with Immediate Simulation Feedback. DOI: 10.5220/0010544402710277 In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications (SIMULTECH 2021), pages 271-277 ISBN: 978-989-758-528-9 Copyright c  2021 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved 271