Hi, I am a newbie, and hope I dont annoy anyone with a fairly basic question.
I have been able to create many good looking part designs, but want to try to use fem
I created a cube measuring 8m x 1m x 1m as per a “https://www.freecad.info/index.php/2020/06/20/fem-workbench-getting-started/”
and when I get to the gmesh section I get a terrible looking mesh. (attached)
tute1.FCStd
cube-mesh-image.png
I still proceed to add constraints / material type / as per the getting started link above,.. i can write .inp file, but get non jacobian error
from calculix… i think the mesh is probably the problem, because it looks nothing like the examples.
Any help would be appreciated.
Ubuntu 22.04.03 … freecad 0.19…
2 files attached. Mesh image and my simple cube with 1 force, and fixed constraint
Try in a newer version like 0.21.2 stable or 0.22 dev. I get a normal mesh with those settings in 0.21.2.
Thankyou newjoker… i will get the stable and go from there… I had a thought there might be an issue with my version, and thank you for confirming that… 
Version 0.21.2 as an appimage totally sorted the problem.
Note is would appear that version 0.19 has trouble with meshes… i tried all sorts of things. I exported the design (as a xxx.brep)and used the stand alone gmsh, which made the meshes very nicely , and then imported back into freecad 0.19 (as a xxx.unv file)… calculix then worked, but after a short time I lost the display of the meshed image… eventually bit the bullet and downloaded approx 800Mb of latest appimage
thanks
sim.
ps. I dont know how to mark an issue as “finished” or resolved.
Considering the rate of FreeCAD development, it’s always best to use versions as new as possible. Especially when it comes to FEM - many bugs have been fixed in recent releases. Hence the note here (it’s a bit outdated though as it should mention 0.21.2 instead of 0.20): https://devtalk.freecad.org/t/read-before-posting-in-fem-forum-section/10374/1
You can edit your first post and add [SOLVED] before the title.