Creating Splice Plies from Producibility

This task shows you how to create splice plies from the simulation results of Producibility for Hand Layup.
The cut-pieces are created from the updatable curves built from the producibility simulation on the ply and the material roll size of the material applied to the ply.
Available in Composites Engineering Design (CPE) and Composites Design for Manufacturing (CPM).
  • The plies must have the same reference surface.
  • The material applied on all the plies must have the same material roll width.
  • At least one producibility must exist on all the selected plies.
  • The current producibility must be of Hand-Layup type and recent (upgrade may be required).
  • The input point must lie on all the ply shells.
  • The generated cut-pieces do not support No Splice Zones nor Butt Splice Zones:
    The result could be larger than the roll width.
    In the example below, the No Splice Zone is the red square.

    With the current input point, the cut-piece shown in orange is larger than the roll width.

    By-pass: Move the input point to create curves outside those zones.

Open the Flattening1.CATPart document.

  1. Click Splice Plies from Producibility  in the Splicing toolbar.
    The 3D Multi-Splice dialog box is displayed.

  2. Select the plies where the cut-pieces are created.
    Multi-selection is available.

  3. Enter the Fiber Mesh Parameters:
    • Point: Seed point (cross). Fiber mesh curves are created on the plane tangent to the ply reference surface at the seed point.
    • Distance: Offset value applied to the rotated curve to build the result curve (green arrow).
    • Angle between the Warp vector and the result curve (circular arrow).

  4. Enter the Splice Parameters to create the parallel curves (in red below):
    • Staggering: Distance between the curve on a given ply and the curve on the next ply (purple arrows).
    • Ovelap between to consecutive cut-pieces.
    • Repeat: Defines on how many plies the staggering is applied from the start position (in the example below, 4).
    • Offset: Distance by which the start position is translated to avoid cut superposition.

  5. Repeat using Material Roll Width is selected by default, to create all the cut-pieces in one shot.
    The roll width is show by the dark green arrow below.

    Clear it if necessary.

  6. Use the blue arrow to orient the ply drop, and the red arrow to orient the overlap.

    The orientations are the same for all splicing curves.

  7. Click OK.

    A 3D Multisplice Group is created.
    It contains a MultiSplice From Producibility node with:

    • Provided parameter values (staggering, overlap, repeat status and associated offset).
    • A Group of FiberMeshCurves.

    The fiber mesh curves are updated after a producibility change.