Do Cuts

Menu: Do cuts

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.

Several dividing options can be found by right clicking on the graphical screen when the options 'cut' or 'divide' are selected.

Cutting spheres will result in a mesh of circles.

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