[Gmsh] structured mesh on stl

[Meysam Joulaian]

Dear All,

I just recently started to work with gmsh. It seems a very nice tool to 
generate structured and unstructured meshes in variety of geometric 
models. In my case, I would like to mesh a geometry that is provided in 
STL format. Unfortuntely the documentation related to the meshing on stl 
formats is somehow sparse. So I decided to ask a question here with the 
hope that someone may help.

For an FSI simulation we need to mesh a blade geometry, which is given 
via a STL file. I was able to import the stl file into gmsh (by using 
"Merge") and create the volume from the surface and finally mesh it 
using tetrahedral elements. Nevertheless I could not find a way to use 
hexahedral elements (or maybe combination of hexahedarl elements and 
prisms) together with stl geometries. Apparently the "Transfinite" 
algorithm is the solution, but unfortunately could not really figure out 
how it works for the case of stl file. Now the question is

1. Is it possible to generate structured mesh on STL models using gmsh?
2. If the answer is yes, could you please explain a little bit how it works

Thank you so much in advance for your help!

All the best,
Meysam

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M.Sc. Meysam Joulaian
Numerische Strukturanalyse mit Anwendungen in der Schiffstechnik (M-10)

Technische Universität Hamburg-Harburg
Am Schwarzenberg-Campus 4
21073 Hamburg

Tel.  : +49 (0)40 42878 - 3898
Fax.  : +49 (0)40 42878 - 6090
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