Can somebody please tell me what is the cause of this error. I've been trying to create prism from the bottom of an empty computational domain in ICEM and I've followed all the necessary steps prior to prism generation, i.e., Surface mesh creation, its smoothing, Volume mesh creation, its smoothing but for some reason it just won't create prisms and the error message it is giving, I have no clue whatsoever what it is ! Someone please help. I've tried a lot many mesh sizings but to no avail. The error message is as follows: Done saving tetin file. Writing domain "temp_prism0.uns" ... Done saving domain file. Running: "C:/Program Files/ANSYS Inc/v202/icemcfd/win64_amd/icemcfd/prism" D:/Aubaid Program is running: pid = 16324 ANSYS ICEM CFD Prism compiled on 6/1/2020 at 3:25 p.m. running on Windows (64 bit version) (c) Copyright 1991 - 2020 Ansys Inc. Usage: àq 2 filename error executing command: surface_file error parsing input file D:/Aubaid Application is finished. Error: prism terminated prematurely --- Mesh Info --- Element types : NODE : 8 LINE_2 : 637 TETRA_4 : 196911 TRI_3 : 27230 Element parts : BOTTOM : 11775 CREATED_MATERIAL_1 : 196911 INLET : 2289 OUTLET : 2280 SIDES : 8092 SOLID_1_1 : 645 TOP : 2794 Total elements : 224786 Total nodes : 40239 Min : -2.1 -2.05 0 Max : 6 2.05 2.4 Finished compute mesh FYI, the surface meshes that I create usually reach quality of around 0.56 after smoothing and the volume meshes that I generate after reach a quality of around 0.4 after smoothing. I'm hoping this isn't a issue as I have seen a number of tutors on youtube managing to create prisms with quality worse than me ! Many thanks for your help in advance. I'm attaching a PDF file with screenshots and their descriptions to give you better idea about domain size and mesh settings.

Besides this, I've one more question. I've learned ICEM from two different sources. While the first source advised to smooth the surface mesh alternately without and with Laplace smoothing (4-5 runs) with last smoothing without laplace, the second source however didn't even use Laplace. So which one of these two is better, because in my experience when I applied alternate smoothings, Laplace actually worsened the "Quality" and the following run without laplace restores it to better quality, so Laplace hasn't done anything for me. And is it necessary to smooth the volume mesh as well because the first source proceeded with his prism mesh without volume smoothing while the second one did.