SMS:Patches

Patching is a mesh generation technique used to fill the interior of a polygon. A polygon is assigned to be a patch in the polygon attributes dialog and is filled with the Map → 2D Mesh command.

The coordinates of the new nodes on the interior of the patch are computed by constructing a partial bicubic Coons patch using the polygon as patch edges. This ensures that interior nodes are smoothly interpolated from the nodes making up the perimeter of the patch. Patches are applicable when the data points are gathered along parallel lines, such as cross sections in a river.

Rectangular Patches

The following are some hints when using rectangular patches:

The curvature of the patch can change somewhat, but it should not switch directions. If it does, then the patch should be split at the inflection point of the curve.

Although opposite sides in the rectangular patch are not required to have the same number of nodes, the best patches occur when this is close. In the example shown above, the two ends have the same number of nodes and the two sides only differ by three nodes.

Triangular Patches

All three sides of a triangular patch must have the same number of nodes.

Errors

When the patch is previewed in the polygon attributes dialog, the elements in a new patch are checked to make sure they do not overlap each other. If any problems are detected, an error message is given and the patch is not created. Errors may occur especially when the region is highly irregular in shape. In such cases, the region can either be divided into smaller patches, or it can be filled using a different mesh generation technique.

If a polygon cannot be patched, a help string under the preview window in the polygon attributes dialog explains what needs to be changed.

Related Topics

• Mesh Generation
• Adaptive Tesselation
• Adaptive Front Triangulation