Tetrahedral mesh-based embodiment design

The engineering design is a systematic approach implemented in the product development process, which is composed of several phases and supported by different tools. Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) tools are particularly dedicated to the embodiment phase and these enable engineers to design and analyze a potential solution. Nonetheless, the lack of integration between CAD and CAE restricts the exploration of design variations. Hence, we aim at incorporating functionalities of a CAD system within a CAE environment, by means of building a high level representation of the mesh and allowing the engineer to handle and manipulate semantic features, avoiding the direct manipulation of single elements. Thus, the engineer will be able to perform extruding, rounding or dragging operations regardless of geometrical and topological limitations. We present in this paper, the intelligence that a simulating mesh needs to support, in order to enable such operations.