FAQ: Are there limits to how many mesh cells I can create?

[Ashley Riggs]

I recently created a mesh of approximately 4 million cells. When I ran the simulation, no results were produced and no output file was generated. After changing the number of cells in the mesh, the simulation finally worked. How many cells are allowed in a mesh?

[Ashley Riggs]

The rule of thumb on numbers of cells is that 1 GB of RAM is needed per million cells per mesh.  On 32 bit machines this creates a limit somewhere between 2 and 3 million total cells.  If you are running on a 64-bit OS with the 32-bit FDS executable, you can use the parallel feature to break up the problem to take advantage of your machine's additional RAM and run larger problems.