Custom node placement in MPAS mesh generation

[anias]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working with MPAS meshes and I understand that the current workflow is largely based on pre-generated meshes and resolution-based refinement, and that mesh generation tools are not yet very user-friendly. However, I’m wondering whether it is, in principle or in practice, possible to constrain or prescribe node placement at specific geographic locations, for example:

• Over key topographic features
• Along coastlines
• At specific points of interest

My understanding is that the discretization does not inherently forbid placing nodes at predefined locations, as long as mesh quality constraints are satisfied. So my main question is:

1. Is there any supported or experimental workflow to generate MPAS meshes with partially user-defined node locations?
2. Has there been any effort to incorporate fixed points or geometric constraints into the MPAS mesh generation, or is the current approach fundamentally limited to resolution-based refinement without explicit control over node placement?

I’m aware this may be computationally demanding or not officially supported, but I would really appreciate any insights, references, or examples from people who may have explored this direction.

Thanks in advance!

 

[mgduda]

In principle, it should be possible to place nodes (cell centers, or Voronoi generating points) at specific locations, as long as mesh quality constraints are satisfied. In any case, the resulting mesh would need to be a Voronoi tessellation, and my guess would be that it would be good to keep the number of pre-defined generating points to a very small fraction of the total number of generating points in the mesh. Unfortunately, I don't have any experience doing this myself.

It's possible that the JIGSAW tool would allow the placement of points at pre-defined locations. Otherwise, if you'd be willing to Lloyd's method yourself, I suppose it might be possible to hold certain generating points fixed in each iteration, forcing the other generating points to arrange themselves to accommodate those points (though under some conditions, I can imagine convergence might be a problem).