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This task shows you how to measure the thickness of a part by using a
capability you can easily adjust to fit your needs. CFO or FMP or (FR1
and TG1 and HA1)
applications are required to access the Wall Thickness Analysis
capability.
In case you do not have any of them installed, you can nevertheless
edit all analysis parameters (except for the body to analyze) or update
already stored wall thickness analyses. |
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Open the
Wall_Thickness.CATPart document. |
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Click Wall Thickness Analysis
in the
Analysis toolbar.
The Wall Thickness Analysis dialog box is displayed.
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Select the body of interest.
The selected body is then set as the current object.
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Keep Sphere as the computation method. The
other method available is Ray. For details, see
About
Analyzing Wall Thickness Analysis.
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Keep Tolerance as the parameter defining the
calculation precision you want. The other possible parameters are
tesselation parameters: Sag and Step.
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Enter the value to define the tolerance you want. In
this example, enter 0.4mm. The analysis result will therefore fall
within the specified tolerance value. For details, see
About Analyzing
Wall Thickness Analysis.
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The measurement unit used in our example is mm. To change units, select
Tools > Options, Parameters and Measure and then the
Units tab. |
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Select the Colors tab to access ranges of
colors for your display.
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Autoscale provides dynamic range scaling for
thicknesses.
By default, the number of values to be used to calculate different
ranges is 10. For the purpose of our scenario, keep this value. Setting
10 values lets the system compute 11 ranges of thicknesses. A color is
assigned to each range by the system.
The bright red color identifies the thinnest areas of the part, that is
areas comprised between 0mm and 10mm.
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Click Run to launch the analysis.
The measure is performed over the whole selected body. A window appears,
informing you about the operation progress. In case you want to
interrupt the operation, just click Cancel.
When the computation is done, the colors assigned to the different
value thickness show the thickness variation of the part, so that you
can immediately observe critical areas where the thickness is not
appropriate.
The part looks like this:
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In case you are interested in only a few thicknesses and
therefore prefer to ignore some areas of the part, just clear the color
you do not want to display on the part.
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For the purpose of our scenario, select all colors
again.
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Select the Options tab to access display
options.
By default, On the fly is selected. This option lets you know
the thickness value at the point where you position your cursor on the
part. The value is displayed in mm, and is not persistent.
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- When On the fly is selected, you can select Display
sphere which shows the sphere under the cursor. Its diameter is
equal to the analysis value on the point.
- When On the fly
is selected, you
can make the thickness value displayed permanent by right-clicking
and selecting Fix indicator.
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In the Inputs
tab, Method
list when you choose Sphere as a computation
mode, No sharp edge option is available in the
Options tab,
Graphics field.
This option filters out the areas close to edges and which thickness is
less than the value set in the corresponding value field. Let us look
closely at an example. If you keep the default value, that is 1mm, we
obtain this display:
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Change the value to 4.3mm and look at the updated
display:
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- Double-clicking on a color displays a palette from which you can set the
color of your choice.
- The analysis will fail if the analyzed part is non-manifold or if it
does not contain any volume at all.
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