The “inflate boundary layer” refinement seems to do nothing, I have played with the settings a lot but it is not working in my project:
Any tips?
Hey hamish_234,
This is because you are using an extrusion mesh. With the standard mesher, the boundary layer can only exist along the side faces (excluding the start and end faces) of an extrusion mesh. However, for some reason, I am unable to visualize the boundary layer within the cross sectional plane. I have already reported it to the team and we will get back to you as soon as a fix is released.
As a workaround for now, you could add the boundary layers without the presence of an extrusion mesh. Maybe change the default general mesh settings directly to have the desired elements and the boundary layer should work fine.
Let us know if you have any questions in the meanwhile! 
Best,
Satvik from SimScale
Hi @hamish_234, @shenoy,
If I can add my input here, if what you’re going for is a “2D analysis” using the Empty2D boundary condition, I’d advise you not to gor for the extrusion mesh refinement but rather generate a 3D mesh, extrude it using ParaView+OpenFOAM and import it back in.
I go through the workflow in detail in this forum post:
Cheers
Igor