Slicing a Solid

You can generate several Slicing Curves Group features in a CATPart, e.g. to support collaborative design:
Several designers would slice portions of the solid and then reconciliate the curves through the merge contour tools.

Slicing Curves Group features have their own update mechanism that lets you track
and decide which changes of their inputs need to be applied downstream.

1. Click Slicing Group in the Preliminary Design toolbar.
   The Solid slicing dialog box is displayed.
   
   

2. Select the solid you want to slice.

3. Select the zones group corresponding to the solid:
   the thickness of the solid must correspond to the thickness laws of the zones.

4. Select a Slicing Method:

   Thickness Law (recommended). To use this method, the zones in the zones group selected must comply with the staggering rule. This method support multi-material zones scenarii. Material and direction information will be applied to the plies. Constant Thickness. To be used if the zones do not comply with the  staggering rule. The contours of the plies will be generated using this constant thickness. If you select this method, key in the Slicing Thickness.

   With Contant Thickness, the plies will be generated with no material and no direction information. Only the generated contours will be applied to the plies.

5. Choose the computation mode:

   Discrete: The upper surface of the solid is discretized using a Sag and a Step parameters. The slicing curves are computed from this discretized view, and smoothed using the Curve degree. The default values of those parameters meet most required accuracies. However, you can edit those values. Exact: Offsets of the support surface of the zone group are computed, using either the thickness law or constant thickness. The slicing curves are computed by projecting the intersections of those offsets with the solid onto the support surface. Sag, Step, and Curve degree are not required and become inactive.

   Exact mode requires that the support surface can be offset to the maximum height.

6. Select a Curve degree:
   The contours are computed from the discretized view of the upper surface of the solid
   and smoothed using this curve degree.

7. Select or clear the Reduce micro edges check box:

   By default, this check box is not selected. The slicing is done patch by patch (by patch, we mean the patches supporting the surface). If you select this check box, the underlying patches are grouped by tangency continuity. This is useful with a surface with many underlying patches as it reduces the number of edges on the contour and removes micro-edges. When working with very taut parts, be careful not to select this check box if you have set the Curve degree to 1: the result would be too simplified, the curves would no longer follow the design.

8. Select or clear the Force simplified computation check box.

   If the solid to slice is a Composites Solid From Zones, the algorithm uses properties of this solid, making the computation faster (Some solid top faces are offset of reference shell faces and lateral faces are normal to the reference shell. Those information are part of the solid from zone results). If the solid to slice is a not a Composites Solid From Zones, but the transformation of one (for example a mirror), the same properties as explained above are retrieved, and selecting the option makes the computation faster. If the solid to slice is a neither a Composites Solid From Zones nor the transformation of one, this option has no effect: Information cannot be retrieved, the algorithm uses only discretization of the solid faces.

9. Click OK.
   The curves are created under the node Slicing Curves Group of Zones Group.1.
   They are grouped by Geometrical Level, each one corresponding to an "altitude" of the contours.
   Hide/Show is available on each Geometrical Level node.
   
   A contextual menu is available to delete a Slicing group: