1. Introduction

Eclectic works by projecting a rectilinear mesh from a bounding box onto the geometry. For each surface, Eclectic projects the rectilinear mesh from one - and only one - side of the bounding box. This projection works optimally when all of the polygons on each surface are close to being parallel to the side of the bounding box used for that surface. Consequently, the division of the geometry into surfaces is key to a successful re-meshing operation. Eclectic will automatically divide parts into surfaces as part of the Prep 1  Step (the first stage of the re-meshing operation). Sometimes the automatic division will not be optimal - for a model, so Eclectic provides user-controlled surface cutting commands.

From the Prep 1 menu box, users can adjust the bounding box for each surface. The bounding box can be rotated so that its sides are parallel to the surfaces. The next operation, Prep 2, identifies edges in the geometry. During Prep 2 soft edges (displayed in white) can be transformed into hard edges (displayed in red). Discontinuities in surface curvature at hard edges will always be preserved by Eclectic, while the mesh may attempt to smooth out surface continuities at soft edges. From this menu, users can also edit vertices - combining vertices and switching between hard/soft vertices. As with the edges, hard vertices will be retained during re-meshing while soft vertices may not be.

With the polygons grouped into surfaces, edges and vertices designated as soft or hard, and bounding boxes associated with surfaces, the geometry is ready to be re-meshed.  The user can elect to mesh the geometry by parts or surfaces instead of meshing the entire geometry at once. When the geometry is re-meshed by parts or surfaces, different meshing densities can be used for each part or surface. 

After re-meshing, the user can edit the mesh: create triangles, combine triangles into quadrilateral elements, split quadrilaterals into triangles, and delete elements. Eclectic also provides a tool to weld parts of the mesh together - this is useful when different mesh densities were applied to different parts or surfaces. Users can then export the mesh for importing into another program for analysis.