Do Cuts |
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Here you can cut and divide volumes, surfaces and cuts. A cut of a volume mesh results in a cut plane. The cut is done for all the meshes, even those that are switched Off . When cutting surfaces, a line set will be created. Here only those surfaces that are switched On are cut.
Another feature is that a cut can be deformed, if meshes are also told to do so (see Deform Mesh ). A cut of a deformed mesh, when changing to the original shape, will be deformed accordingly.
When dividing volumes/surfaces, only those elements of the volumes/surfaces that are switched On and which lie on one side of a specified plane will be used to create another volume/surface.
- 2 Points : the plane is defined by two points and the visual direction orthogonal to the screen.
- 3 Points : the plane is defined by three points. When choosing the points, the nodes of the mesh can also be used.
- Succession: This option is an enhancement of Cut Plane. Here you specify an axis that will be used to create cut planes orthogonal to this axis. The number of planes is also asked for.
- exact: to do an exact division, i.e. elements are cut to create the division;
- parallel planes: the remaining elements will be the ones between two parallel planes. A distance can also be entered, after choosing this option from the Contextual menu.
Cuts can also be read from and written to a file. The information stored to the file from a 'Cut Plane' is the plane equation that defines the plane ( Ax + By + Cz + D = 0), so it can be used with several models. The information stored in the file from a 'Cut Wire' is the points list of the cut-wire, i.e. the intersection between the wire and the edges of the meshes/sets. These files are standard ASCII files. A line of a 'Cut Plane' archive contains the four coefficients of the plane that defines the cut, separated by spaces. A line of a 'Cut Wire' archive contains the three coordinates of a point of the wire. Comment lines are allowed and should begin with a '#'.
An example of a 'Cut Plane' file where three planes were written:
# planes created from a 'cut succession'
-10.82439 0.5740206 0 51.62557
-10.82439 0.5740206 0 12.45994
-10.82439 0.5740206 0 -26.70569
An example of a 'Cut Wire' file:
-2.444425 3.883427 2.487002
2.130787 2.762815 3.885021
0.8411534 4.458836 3.215301
4.270067 3.795048 2.037187
5.66561 3.414776 0.8219391
2.945865 3.600701 3.29012
0.4487007 3.764661 3.574121