Filling Holes on Meshes

This task shows you how to fill holes on meshes with the following advantages:
  • You can either select the holes manually or automatically.
  • The filling can be basic (no point inserted, basic remeshing) or more sophisticated
    (points are inserted, and the meshing can be flat or curved).
Open the Fillhole1.CATPart from the samples directory.

  1. Select the Fill Holes icon and Cloud Import.1.

  2. The dialog box is displayed.

    A first recognition of the holes is done:
    • X means the hole is not selected.
    • V means the hole is selected.
    • The biggest hole found is considered as "exterior". 
      Since you usually do not want to fill the outside of the part, this hole is not selected, but you can change its status.

  3. Click the label to select or de-select a given hole or right-click a label to call the contextual menu: 

    Use Selected/Not selected as a toggle on a single hole, and Select all/De-Select all as a toggle on all holes.

  4. To automatically select the holes to fill, select the Hole size check box and enter a value.
    A sphere is displayed.

    All the holes smaller than this sphere are selected.

  5. Click Apply. A basic meshing is computed to fill the hole.

  6. Close the dialog box and repeat this step with the Points insertion check box selected and click Apply.
    A new meshing is computed, with more meshing points:

  7. When Points insertion is selected, the Step check box and the Shape slider become available.

    • Select the Step check box to control the step of the meshing, that is the maximum length of the mesh edges.
    • The filling is computed on a virtual surface, the curvature coefficient of which is controlled by the Shape slider.

      By default, the slider is set to 0.5, resulting in a filling with a low curvature.

      If you set the slider to 0, the filling is flat.

      If you set the slider to 1, the filling is rounded.

  8. Click Apply to visualize the filling with given parameters.
    If you are not satisfied, click Undo, modify the parameters and click Apply to refresh the filling.
    Once you are satisfied, click OK to validate and exit the action.
  • Undo is available within the action, not after you have exited the action.
  • The holes to fill must be closed.
  • When no coherent result can be computed, an error message is displayed.