<pclass="glsbody"style="margin-top:1pt;">It is a description of the entities of the mesh with dimension N. This description is made by an ordered list of geometrical entities (nodes, edges, or faces) with dimension N-1.<p>
<pclass="glsbody"style="margin-top:1pt;">An edge of a volumetric or surface mesh. It is composed of 2 or 3 nodes (2 vertex nodes and optionally one middle node).<p>
<pclass="glsbody"style="margin-bottom:1pt;"><nobr><b>Entity of a mesh</b></nobr></p>
<pclass="glsbody"style="margin-top:1pt;">Geometrical component of the mesh: node, cell, face and edge. Faces and edges are only intermediate entities allowing to define the cells in descendant connectivity.<p>
<pclass="glsbody"style="margin-top:1pt;">Entities of a mesh are described by a certain number of characteristics (boundary conditions, groups membership). Families represent classes equivalent to these characteristics (two entities of a mesh can belong to the same family if they have the same characteristics). Every family is determined by a set of attributes and a list of groups membership.<p>
<pclass="glsbody"style="margin-top:1pt;">Field consists of one or several scalar components. One definite type is associated to the given field and the values corresponding to different components are all of the same type.<p>
<pclass="glsbody"style="margin-top:1pt;">Fields can be defined only on one part of the mesh. Profile of the field or profile of the component of a field indicates which entities of the mesh contain values.<p>
<pclass="glsbody"style="margin-top:1pt;">Mesh is described by its geometry: list of nodes and list of cells which constitute this mesh. Supplementary information is added with the help of families (initial, boundary conditions).<p>
<pclass="glsbody"style="margin-top:1pt;">Node can be an isolated node of a mesh, a vertex or middle node of an edge. A node is associated to a point.<p>