Creating Iso-Thickness Areas

1. Insert a Geometrical Set in the specification tree, name it IsoThicknessPoints and make it the In Work Object.

2. Click Create iso-thickness areas .
   The Iso-thickness Areas dialog box is displayed:
   
   The Plies Groups found in the model are displayed in the dialog box.
   If necessary, select the one from which you want to create the iso-thickness areas.

3. Click 3D Assistant.
   The model is updated and a first group of iso-thickness areas is computed and displayed in the 3D Viewer:
   

4. For each identified iso-thickness area, pick a point (core sample) as shown below:

   You can either: select Point Indication and pick the reference surface where you want to create the core sample point (the point does not exist yet), or select Point Selection and pick existing points. Multi-selection is available through and the dialog box below: A contextual menu is available: As soon as you have picked a point on one of the iso-thickness areas proposed in the step above, this area turns red to prevent another pick on the same area.

5. Select the Generate shell boundaries check box to create the boundaries of the iso-thickness areas.

6. Select the Save indication points in work object to create the points in the current In Work Object (see step 1). You can thus reselect all those points in one-shot if iso-thickness areas need to be recreated.

7. Click OK. If necessary, select the kind of synchronization in the message that is displayed. The iso-thickness areas are created:

   In each iso-thickness area node, you will find: the thickness of the area, the boundaries of the area, the Additional thickness ratio. By default, it is set to 0. It can be modified at the creation of the iso-thickness areas, or later. The core sample points are either stored under the iso-thickness area node if Save indication points in work object was not selected: or under a single In Work Object if Save indication points in work object was selected:

• the bottom of the ramp (i.e. last ply+1 on ramp support) if the plies are created with the grid approach (i.e. if they are based on ramp support). In that case, the iso-thickness area turns yellow. If the iso-thickness area cannot be relimited by the bottom of the ramp, it turns pink.
• the last ply contour if plies are not created with the grid approach, or if plies have been modified with non-grid approach tools (e.g. limit contour).
• iso-thickness areas that are only relimited by the last ply contour will have a different color so that you can identify them and rework them.
• a warning will be issued if an iso-thickness area needs to be reworked.
• you can modify the shape of an iso-thickness area before creating the solid.
• when the core sample point of an iso-thickness area may have become invalid, a mask at the iso-thickness area node indicates that the feature needs to be updated:
  • double-click the feature to edit it,
  • check the location of the core sample point,
  • click OK to run the computation and update the feature.
  • if you modify an iso-thickness area, and add or modify core sample points, iso-thickness areas that have not been impacted do not need to be recomputed.

Selecting Imposed thickness points is optional. Selecting some allows you to manage ramps that do not follow a linear law (e.g. because a manual ply has been added), or ramps at the edge of the part.