Ground contact step

New Ground contact step adds a plinth at the ground contact for cleaner meshing.

Ground contact step image
Gianluca Materazzo image
Gianluca Materazzo CFD engineer
Published on Sep 28, 2026

When a model sinks into the ground plane, the area where the two surfaces meet is sometimes hard to mesh cleanly. The new Ground contact step option handles this for you.

With ground enabled and a negative ground offset, it’s now possible to insert a plinth beneath the full model. A plinth is a short vertical extrusion that lets the mesh transition cleanly where the model and ground intersect. The mesh is also refined automatically in this region.

Ground contact step

How to use it

Make sure ground is enabled, go to Advanced settings, and turn on Ground contact step. The option only has an effect when the ground offset is negative. With a zero or positive offset, nothing changes.

Plinth height and accuracy

The plinth is artificial geometry that doesn’t exist on the real model, so the shorter it is, the more realistic the flow where the model meets the ground. You don’t set its height directly. It comes from the mesh resolution, so raising the simulation quality shortens the plinth automatically.