TetGen

TetGen

TetGen is an open source quality tetrahedral mesh generator and 3D Delaunay triangulator. It can generate tetrahedral meshes for given 3D polygonal domains with quality guarantees. It is useful for finite element analysis simulations.
TetGen image
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TetGen: Open Source Tetrahedral Mesh Generator

TetGen is an open source quality tetrahedral mesh generator and 3D Delaunay triangulator, providing high-quality meshes for finite element analysis simulations.

What is TetGen?

TetGen is an open source software for generating tetrahedral meshes of any 3D polyhedral domains. It generates exact Delaunay tetrahedralizations, boundary recovery, and conforming Delaunay tetrahedral meshes. The key features of TetGen include:

  • Guaranteed quality tetrahedral meshes with good dihedral angles
  • Handles complex geometries with holes, multiple regions, and nested domains
  • Variety of options to generate conforming Delaunay meshes
  • Fast and robust implementations for large scale meshing problems
  • Ports to multiple platforms like Windows, Linux, and macOS

TetGen has applications in numerical simulations based on finite element or finite volume methods. The quality tetrahedral meshes allows accurate solutions for problems in structural mechanics, computational fluid dynamics, electromagnetics etc. It has bindings for programming languages like C++, Python, MATLAB, Julia etc. Overall, TetGen is a versatile, efficient and reliable open source software for generating tetrahedral meshes for complex 3D geometries.

TetGen Features

Features

  1. 3D Delaunay tetrahedralization
  2. Mesh refinement
  3. Mesh optimization
  4. Mesh quality metrics
  5. Mesh quality improvement
  6. Mesh boundary recovery
  7. Mesh boundary protection
  8. Mesh constrained Delaunay tetrahedralization
  9. Mesh constrained Delaunay refinement
  10. Mesh sizing function specification
  11. Mesh regional attributes
  12. Mesh volume constraints
  13. Mesh surface constraints
  14. Mesh regional constraints
  15. Mesh hole insertion
  16. Mesh diagnostics

Pricing

  • Open Source

Pros

Robust and efficient algorithms

High quality tetrahedral meshes

Open source and free to use

Customizable through APIs

Cross-platform

Cons

Limited documentation and examples

Steep learning curve

Command line interface only

Lacks graphical user interface


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