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Hexahedral meshing plays a critical role in high fidelity computational solid mechanics. However, many tools remain inaccessible due to the cost of purchase or a poor user experience. In this work, we describe efforts to facilitate a highquality user experience with a new hexahedral meshing software developed using topological sweeping operations. These efforts include integrating the tool with existing software for engineering design, preprocessing, meshing, and visualization; creating a Python-based application protocol interface (API) to allow for easier scripting and interactions without requiring experience in C++; creating a user manual to discuss how to operate the software; and performing a simple case study on five potential users of various background about how to interact with the software. Feedback indicated the value of providing additional background and examples and will help improve future work on the user experience of this software in order to ultimately create a meaningful tool for educational and industrial use. 

Abstract Extracting quadrilateral layouts from surface triangulations is an important step in texture mapping, semi-structured quadrilateral meshing for traditional analysis and spline reconstruction for isogeometric analysis. Current methods struggle to yield high-quality layouts with appropriate connectivity between singular nodes (known as “extraordinary points” for spline representations) without resorting to either mixed-integer optimization or manual constraint prescription. The first of these is computationally expensive and comes with no guarantees, while the second is laborious and error-prone. In this work, we rigorously characterize curves in a quadrilateral layout up to homotopy type and use this information to quickly define high-quality connectivity constraints between singular nodes. The mathematical theory is accompanied by appropriate computational algorithms. The efficacy of the proposed method is demonstrated in generating quadrilateral layouts on the United States Army’s DEVCOM Generic Hull vehicle and parts of a bilinear quadrilateral finite element mesh (with some linear triangles) of a 1996 Dodge Neon.