Examples of each button's functionality can be viewed by clicking on the button.
Split
Pick a curve or surface and any number of points at which you want the curve or surface split. To carry out the splitting process and create multiple curves or surfaces, select the Split button. There are specific methods you can use to do this, three for splitting a curve and one for splitting a surface.
Splitting a curve:Splitting a Surface:
- Splitting a curve with one or more points on the curve picked, the curve will be split at each picked point.
- Splitting a curve with one or more points in space picked (i.e. points not lying on the curve), the curve will be split at the points on the curve closest to each picked point.
- Splitting a curve with no points picked:
- If a value between 0 and 1 is specified in the Global Argument field
, the curve will be split at the specified percent arc-length location.
- If the Global Argument field is blank, the curve will be split at all discontinuities. Discontinuities are defined as instantaneous turn angles of 30 degrees or more. To split the curve at smaller turn angles, specify the desired angle in the Vector angle text field
.
- Splitting a Surface with one or more points close to a boundary of the surface, the surface will be split along isoparametric curves which cross the surface from those specified points.
Union
Joins two picked curves or surfaces at the common point or curve, respectively. NOTE: You can only union two curves or two surfaces at one time.
Intersection
You can intersect objects by first picking the desired objects, then selecting the Intersection button. This will result in 4 different actions, depending upon the entities picked before the command is executed.
- Curve-Curve intersection
You can pick curves which intersect, and they will be split at their first point of intersection after selecting the Intersection button. If two curves are picked which do not intersect, they will be split at their closest points, provided those points are not the endpoints. If multiple curves are picked, the first curve will be intersected with all other picked curves.
- Curve-Surface intersection
Select a surface and any number of curves. The curves will be split where they intersect the surface.
- Surface-Surface intersection
You can pick multiple surfaces and then the Intersection button. The first surface picked will be intersected with all other picked surfaces, and the curves resulting from these intersections will be generated.
- Group-Group
You can intersect two groups with only the surfaces in one group being intersected with surfaces in the other group. Surfaces within a single group will not be intersected using this method.NOTE: The quality of the intersections is dependent on the resolution of the objects being intersected (especially when intersecting surfaces).
Project/Form
Projects the selected curve on to the selected surface. If a single surface and any number of curves are selected, the curves will be projected onto the surface creating parametric curves on that surface (the original curves are not deleted). If a single curve, a vector, and any number of surfaces are picked, the curve is formed to the selected surfaces. The formed curve can then be split at the surface boundaries and projected onto the individual surfaces.
Curve Projection Mode
By using this selector, you can easily choose your mode of curve projection. CAUTION: It is highly recommended that you use the Discrete option due to the large number of control points created when using the other modes.
- Current Display Discretization: You can control the current display resolution by picking the curve(s) and changing the resolution of the curve(s) with the Resolution fields and button.
- Tolerance-Based Evaluation: You can use this mode to calculate the number of control points generated on a curve dependent upon the user-specified Tolerance.
- Calculated Uniform Sampling: This mode takes the NURB representation of the curve and calculates the resolution of the projected curve by taking into account the order and number of control points in the original curve.
- Control Points: This mode projects the control points of the curve onto the surface to construct the projected curve on the surface. The results for rational curves depend on the curvature and parameterization of the surface.
