This presentation gives a unified framework to address many issues in mesh generation and mesh adaptation from surface, volume to anisotropic meshing. After reviewing the design of so-call metric-based error estimates to control and prescribe strechings and orientations from solutions of PDEs, we will show how to recast all classical meshing operators (insertion, collapse, swaps, …) to a unique cavity-based operator. We will demonstrate that this methodology addresses efficiently surface (re)meshing, non-manifold geometry, adaptive anisotropic (re)meshing, structured boundary layer (re)meshing, hybrid mesh generation, ...These concepts will be illustrated on CFD simulations.