Inverting Surfaces and Curves

This task explains how to invert the normals of selected curves or surfaces.

With this command, the following invert operations can be carried out:

• inverting surface normals,
• inverting the direction of curves,
• aligning the normals of a set of surfaces or the direction of a set of curves,
• inverting the U and V direction of surfaces.

The 'Invert' command is available in two variants:

• Invert: After having carried out the inversion, a Feature element 'Invert.X' is inserted in the specification tree and the original elements are set to Hide mode.
• Invert (only Datum): With this command, the inverted elements remain datum elements.

Open the InvertSurface.CATPart document.

1. Click the Invert icon or the Invert (only Datum) icon .
   The Invert dialog box is displayed.

• Surfaces: Selection of the surfaces to be inverted.
• Curves: Selection of the curves to be inverted.
• Reference: Only available for the options Align Direction, Align Normals and Align UV.
  Selection of a reference element.
• Mode:
  • Change Orientation (for surface elements only): In this mode, the options  Reverse U/V, Swap UV, and Invert Shell Normal are available.
  • Align Normals (for surface elements only): Aligns the normals of all selected surface elements lying within one region (see Gap Distance) according to the normal direction of the surface chosen as a Reference.
    
    
    
    
  • Align UV (for surface elements only): Aligns U and V direction of all selected surface elements lying within one region (see Gap Distance) according to the U and V direction of the surface chosen as a Reference.
    
    
    
    
  • Invert Direction (for curve elements only): Inverts the direction of the selected curve elements.
    
    
    
    
  • Align Directions (for curve elements only): Aligns the direction of all selected curve elements lying within one region (see Gap Distance) according to the direction of the curve chosen as a Reference.
    
    
    

The following options Reverse U/V, Swap UV, and Invert Shell Normal are only available in the mode Change Orientation.

• Reverse U/V (for surface elements only): Inverts the U or V direction of all selected surface elements.
  
  
  
  
• Swap UV (for surface elements only): Swaps the U and V directions of all selected surface elements.
  
  
  
  
• Invert Shell Normal (for surface elements only): Inverts the normal direction of the selected surface elements.
  
  
  
• Gap Distance: Only available for the options Align Direction, Align Normals and Align UV.
  If the distance between selected surfaces is larger than the specified tolerance value, they are assigned to different regions.
  Curves and surfaces cannot be mixed.
• Display Vectors: Display of the normal vectors and the U and V direction arrows on a surface.
  Display of the direction vectors of a curve.
• Results: Displays the number of selected and adjusted elements as well as the number of regions after a multi-selection.