Mesh failed for the raft model

Question

I modeled a mat foundation following a training video, with the latest SFA version updated this morning. 
 But mash failed. 
 By the way, in this version of SFA, the tool "optimize based on area" is missing. 
 Chemical.sfa

Kris Sathia · Answer

Hi Zhao, 
 This is one suggestion for the problem related to the meshing. You mentioned that the "Generate mesh" button does not bring up the Meshing Options dialog box. 
 In the Help menu, if you select Readme, it will bring up a screen in which there is an option called Installation Requirements. Can you please have a look at the information on that page and see if your computer meets those criteria?

AndrejLogunov · Answer

Hi, 
 You have probably received these warnings among few other ones: 
 
 This seem to be a program limitation, it cannot handle the mat with footings that are in different planes.

Kris Sathia · Answer

If the mat boundary and the opening are at different elevations, then, in the current version, Build 9.3.0.14, the following happens. 
 The program tries to generate a mesh by creating a curved surface that looks like a bowl. In your case, with a 300 mm default target element size, it takes a while (upto a minute or two) to create a mesh. If you increase the size to 1000 mm, the mesh generation is much faster. 
 For this curved mat, the sides of the mat region form the bottom edge of the surface, and the opening forms the top edge. If the STD file that is created for the FE model of the mat is opened in STAAD.Pro, you can view the Y coordinate of the various points on the mesh. 
 If the mat boundary and the opening are at the same elevation, then, you will see that a mesh is being created in a single plane. 
 Here are the images of the mesh from Build 9.3.0.14 for the 2 models you attached.

Kris Sathia · Answer

Zhao, 
 The tools we use to create SFA and many other programs are dependent on the Windows operating system. These are the tools that facilitate such tasks as displaying the model in the GUI, display dialog boxes, etc. 
 Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 7 in January of this year. 
 https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-windows-7-support#:~:text=Support%20for%20Windows%207%20ended,more%20vulnerable%20to%20security%20risks. 
 This means, if we run into a specific problem on Windows 7, and the fault lies in one of those tools, we often cannot get a corrected version for that tool. 
 There have been cases where users who experienced similar errors on Windows 7 Professional 64-bit found that, after moving to a newer OS like 8.1 or 10, they did not encounter such errors. Our suggestion to you hence would be to do the same.

Mesh failed for the raft model

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