Creating Plies From Slicing

The command Plies From Slicing:

• Computes the contours of the plies (inner and outer) from the curves of each Geometrical Level node
  of the Slicing Curves Group feature,
• Scans the thickness laws of each zone to define the material/orientations to be assigned to the plies,
• Generates sequences and plies (contour + material/orientation) that are compatible with the zones thickness laws:
  • A new sequence will be created for each Geometrical Level,
  • Inside each sequence, a new ply will be built for each contour found in the Geometrical Level.
  • A knowledge parameter containing the Geometrical Level information will be stored for each sequence and ply created.
  • If incorrect slicing curves are found in a geometrical level
    (e.g. a curve of an inner contour intersects the outer contour or the contour itself),
    making the computation of the contour impossible, the computation of the plies will fail
    for the corresponding sequence only.
  • The ExtrapolDist parameter is taken into account.
    When a gap greater than ExtrapolDist is found in slicing curves, the corresponding plies will have open contours.
    They will be listed in a message.
  • Plies with an invalid contour will be put in evidence by the new ply table command.
• Assigns a rosette to the generated plies.
   
  • If you have selected an existing plies group, the plies will inherit the rosette of this plies group.
  • If you create a new plies group and if the Slicing from Solid was made with the Thickness Law option,
    the plies will inherit the rosette of the zones found in the zones group.
  • If you create a new plies group and if the Slicing from Solid was made with the Constant Thickness option,
    you will have to select a rosette.

Please note:

• Window plies (i.e. plies with inner contours) are allowed.
  E.g.: in a given geometrical level, the following configuration will generate 2 plies in the same sequence.
  The first ply will have 2 contours (one inner, one outer) and the second ply will have one contour.
  
• A smoothing operation is introduced for the “on surface” contours to reduce the number of micro-edges.

Associativity management

The command Plies From Slicing manages the associativity between the slicing from solid and the generation of plies:

If plies have already been created from the same Slicing Curves Group, restart the command Plies From Slicing
on this Slicing Curves Group to update the plies.
The modifications (deletion, addition and geometry modifications) will be processed as follows:

• Deletion of a contour involved in a ply contour : as a consequence, the contour is opened.
  The Plies From Slicing command searches a curve in the corresponding Geometrical Level
  that could be used to close the contour. It is not a manual operation.
• Addition of a contour : for example, new plies have been added to a zone.
  The Plies From Slicing command will generate new contours as well as the corresponding plies.
  It is not a manual operation.
• If a curve involved in a ply contour has been geometrically modified due to a modification of the solid,
  the contour will be automatically updated.

This way:

• The plies data structure is always synchronized with the zone definition,
• If downstream operations have been processed on the plies that are not modified,
  those operations will not be lost after the update of the plies.

1. Click Plies From Slicing in the Plies toolbar.
   The Plies From Slicing dialog box is displayed.
   

2. Select a Slicing feature, i.e. a Slicing Curves Group.

3. Optional: To create the plies in an existing plies group, select one from the specification tree.
   The dialog box is updated accordingly.
   Otherwise, select the Create new plies group check box (this is what we have done).
   

4. Click Preview to check the result, and OK to validate and exit the dialog box.
   A new Stacking is created.
   A new Plies Group is created in this Stacking, than contains the plies: