28.4 Point Surfaces

You may often be interested in displaying results at a single point in the domain. For example, you may want to monitor the value of some variable or function at a particular location. To do this, you must first create a "point'' surface, consisting of a single point. When you display node-value data on a point surface, the value displayed will be a linear average of the neighboring node values. If you display cell-value data, the value at the cell in which the point lies will be displayed.

To create a point surface, you will use the Point Surface dialog box (Figure  28.4.1).

Surface $\rightarrow$ Point...

Figure 28.4.1: The Point Surface Dialog Box

The steps for creating the point surface are as follows:

1.   Specify the location of the point. There are three different ways to do this:

• Enter the coordinates ( x0,y0,z0) under Coordinates.

• Click on the Select Point With Mouse button and then select the point by clicking on a location in the active graphics window with the mouse-probe button. (See Section  29.3 for information about setting mouse button functions.)

• Use the Point Tool option to interactively position a point in the graphics window. You can set the initial location of this point using one of the two methods described above for specifying the point's position (or you can start from the position defined by the default Coordinates). See Section  28.4.1 for information about using the point tool.

2.   If you do not want to use the default name assigned to the surface, enter a new name under New Surface Name. The default name is the concatenation of the surface type and an integer which is the new surface ID (e.g., point-5). (If the New Surface Name you enter is the same as the name of a surface that already exists, ANSYS FLUENT will automatically assign the default name to the new surface when it is created.)

The surface name that you enter must begin with an alphabetical letter. If your surface name begins with any other character or number, ANSYS FLUENT will not accept the entry.

3.   Click on the Create button to create the new surface.

If you want to check that your new surface has been added to the list of all defined surfaces, or you want to delete or otherwise manipulate any surfaces, click on the Manage... button to open the Surfaces dialog box. See Section  28.11 for details.