You changed the mesh. Or you changed a parameter. The new result looks "about the same" as the old one. But how much is "about"? And where in the model is the change biggest? Most users open two plots side by side and compare them by eye. This is slow, and it hides small but important differences. COMSOL has a better tool for this job: the Join dataset. It combines two solutions into one dataset, so you can plot the difference directly. What the Join Dataset Does The Join dat

When you build a mesh in a 3D model, COMSOL shows you only the outside of it. You see the surface triangles, but you do not see what happens inside the domain. Are the elements inside fine enough? Does the boundary layer grow correctly into the volume? Where are the bad elements? The meshed complex structure example. How to inspect the mesh in detail? You can look inside the mesh using a Mesh plot in Results. In this article, you will learn how to do it step by step. Step 1:

When you plot two results in COMSOL, the colors often do not match. Each plot picks its own color range by default. This makes it hard to compare two plots side by side. Luckily, COMSOL has a simple fix for this. In this article, you will learn how to lock the color scale. This way, both plots use the same colors for the same values. Why the Colors Do Not Match By default, COMSOL sets the color range automatically for each color plot. It looks at your data and picks a minimum

A mesh study checks if your mesh is fine enough. You solve the same model on several mesh densities and compare the results. If the answer stops changing, you found a mesh you can trust. You do not need to build this by hand every time. COMSOL lets you start simple and add control step by step. This article shows three levels: the default physics-controlled mesh, an edited physics-induced sequence with a size parameter, and a single scale parameter that drives the whole study

How to calculate an integral in COMSOL Multiphysics with some step-by-step examples. An integral is very often needed when you need to compute some user-defined postprocessing variables, e.g., lift, drag, heat flux, or any other.

Every COMSOL plot you've ever admired for its gorgeous, gradient-smooth color field has been touched up. COMSOL averages your results before it draws them. The smooth field on your screen is not exactly what the solver computed. It's called smoothing. How to work with smoothing and what are the best practices?

When you run a time-dependent coupled simulation, let's say, a Joule-heating problem where both temperature and electric potential evolve over time, exporting two separate animations and watching them separately is clunky. COMSOL gives you at least two clean ways to place multiple plot groups side by side inside a single animation. This article walks through both: the modern Array approach available since COMSOL 5.x, and the classic Deformation-node offset trick that still wo

If you have ever simulated a large 3D model in COMSOL Multiphysics and watched your hard drive fill up within minutes, you already know the problem. By default, COMSOL stores the full solution across the entire mesh — every node, every element, every physics variable — for every time step or parameter value in your study. For a fine-mesh with millions of degrees of freedom, that data can easily balloon into tens or even hundreds of gigabytes. The good news is that COMSOL give

In CFD, the quality of your results is determined long before you press the Run button. In this article, we provide you with our “pre-flight” checklist for nearly every CFD simulation.

From time to time, we receive questions about which functions in COMSOL Multiphysics we appreciate the most. Here are the key features of this commercial tool, sorted from the most popular among consultants collaborating with Simulation Guys.