Creating or Editing Plies Manually

This task shows you how to manually create pliesor edit existing plies. A ply is a piece of fabric made of several contours and zones.
Available in Composites Engineering Design (CPE), Composites Design for Manufacturing (CPM) and Composites Braiding (CPB).
Open the ManualPlies1.CATPart document.

  1. Create plies from zones.
    Make sure you select both Zone Group.1 and Zone Group.2. The plies are created under Plies Group.1.

  2. Create a plies group.

  3. Click Ply   in the Plies toolbar and select Plies Group.2 you just created.
    The Ply Definition dialog box is displayed.

  4. Select the curves that form the contour.
    See Defining a Contour for more information.

  5. In the Attributes tab,

    define the:
    from the lists.
    For NCF materials, the Attributes tab page changes to let you choose Hand A or Hand B.
    See About Rosette and Rosette Transfer Type for more information.

  6. Click OK to create the ply.
    The Stacking node includes the plies groups, the set of sequences (order), and for each sequence, the set of plies (containing the geometry)


  7. Create three more plies, selecting the pink curves as contour on the geometry.
    Here is the result of the plies creation.

    Plies are displayed in the 3D geometry according to a color code depending on their orientation.
 
  Note that the ply points to the material cache feature stored in the Composites Parameters.

Starting with R18, you can no longer apply a material to a ply with the Apply Material command.
 

  1. Right-click Plies Group.2 and select Plies Group.2 object, then Reorder children.
    The sequence of plies are displayed in the Reorder Children dialog box.

  2. Select Sequence.63 for instance and use the up and down arrows to modify its place in the stacking.

  3. Click OK.
    The specification tree is modified accordingly.

  4. Right-click Ply.59 and select Ply.59 object, then Change Geometrical Set.
    The following dialog box is displayed, in which all the elements of the specification tree are available.

  5. Select the sequence you would like to move Ply.59 to.
    In our example we selected Sequence.62.

  6. Click OK.
    The specification tree is modified accordingly.
  • Note that Change Geometrical Set command enables you to move a ply from one sequence to another, whereas performing a copy/paste of a ply in a sequence creates a new ply. 
  • Moving a ply using the Change Geometrical Set command is taken into account when synchronizing a manufacturing document.
When selecting the ply contour in the specification tree,
  • The ply is highlighted in the model.
  • Information is displayed in the status bar.
To easily locate the ply in the specification tree:
  • Select it in the model.
  • Right-click it, then select Center graph.
  • To edit an existing ply, simply double-click it in the specification tree. The Ply Definition dialog box opens and you are able to modify its contours and attributes.
For more information on geometrical sets, refer to Managing Geometrical Sets.