MGEN Extrude

MGEN is a tool in the meshing workflow that takes a 2D source mesh and extrudes it in the third dimension based off of user input. The tool was originally created for use on structured grids on the Boeing bump, but has since been generalized for use in unstructured setups.

Basic Overview

MGEN code is stored in tm3Extrude.f and written in FORTRAN. The code takes in a source 2D mesh, z-coordinates to extrude between, the number of elements to populate the extrusion with, and the number of partitions to write the mesh to.

Partitioning in MGEN is simply a method to reduce the cost of initial runs of Chef, but is not a replacement for the initial configuring that Chef does (via 1-1-Chef). Parting in MGEN simply allows the first run of Chef to be in parallel (i.e. 8-8-Chef). Starting Chef from parallel is most important on large grids that would take prohibitively long to run though Chef in serial.

The most current copy of the code is available at (location) as of (date)

Usage

Once a suitable version of tm3Extrude.f has been located and moved to a working directory, it first needs to be complied if this has not already been done. The FORTRAN compiler to compile tm3Extrude.f should be the same version that was/will be used to compile the version of Chef to be used later in the meshing pipeline in order to reduce the risk of complications.

Once a compiler version is selected and added using soft add or module load (depending on the system), it can be compiled. As an example, if using gcc-6.3.0 on Cooley compiling would look like:

soft add +gcc-6.3.0

gfortran -03 tm3Extrude.f -o tm3Extrude

Once the code is compiled, the working directory needs to be prepared to run MGEN. MGEN needs the source 2D mesh in the form of geom.crd and geom.cnn files in the same directory as the compiled code. These source files can be produced from scratch with MATLAB for structured grids, or through the use of Simmetrix and the Convert tool for unstructured grids.