Ansys Meshing – Sizing (SOFT / HARD)

When you apply a sizing control in Ansys Meshing you also choose its behaviour, and that choice decides whether the number you typed is a target or an order.

Soft behaviour lets the mesher adjust the size you asked for, so other controls, curvature and proximity settings can override it where they need to. Hard behaviour enforces it strictly, keeping the elements at that size regardless of what the surrounding mesh would prefer.

Soft is the safer default, because it lets the global settings blend the transitions and you avoid sudden jumps in cell size. Hard is for the cases where a specific region must keep an exact resolution, and it should be used knowing that abrupt size changes hurt mesh quality and, with it, convergence.