Creating Iso-Thickness Areas

Click Iso-Thickness Areas in the Top Surface & Solid toolbar.
The Iso-thickness Areas dialog box is displayed:

The plies groups found in the model are displayed in the dialog box.

Choose a Create From option:

Complete stacking: The complete stacking is selected, the plies groups listed in the dialog box are no longer selectable. Selection of groups: Select the required groups from the list in the dialog box. Multi-selection is possible.

Select core sampling points to define the iso-thickness areas manually:

Either select the Point Selection option, and select exisiting points in the 3D viewer. Or select the Point Indication option and pick locations in the 3D viewer. Then decide if you want to save those indication points in the in work object or not. If required, create additional points using the contextual menu. You can mix both options, e.g. select existing points, then indicate points to complete the selection. Multi-selection is available through and the dialog box below: The number of points selected or indicated is displayed in the dialog box.

To define the iso-thickness areas automatically:

Enter a value in the spinner under Points Defining Areas. This value represents the minimum width that makes an iso-thickness area selectable. By default, this value is set to the maximum drop-off value. It varies with the maximum drop-off value. You can also edit it manually. Click Compute and select areas wider than ... This button is available only once in creation mode. This button is not available in edition mode. We recommend that you consider this automatic mode as an initialization step, to be completed manually. Potential iso-thickness areas are computed. Those wider than the value entered are automatically selected. A progress bar is displayed. Indication points are created and selected as you would have done manually.

For models not designed with a grid approach,
define the Drop-Off Values used to compute the bottom of slope.

By default: Maximum is set to 0 if no ramp support has been defined, or to the maximum step of slope found in all ramp supports of the model otherwise. Default is set to 0 if no ramp support has been defined, or to the minimum step of slope found in all ramp supports of the model otherwise.

Optional: Select the Ignore ramp supports check box.
This is useful when ramp supports do not fully fit your requirements.
(The first curve in the ramp support is not the top one, or you need to extend plies by a symmetry).
This options applies to the iso-thickness areas group, not to individual iso-thickness areas.
When this check box is selected, the shells are relimited by the bottom slope,
computed with the distance to neighboring ply contours, with a geometrical approach.
If this automatic computation fails, you can relimit specific shells using standard relimitation commands.

Click More...

Select a contour or Composites geometry and the required method to create limits.

Iso-Thickness Area: Creates the ITA group only inside the selected area (one selection permitted). The top surface generated from this ITA group is limited by the contour or geometry. No Thickness Area: Creates the ITA group with all the areas found inside the selected contour or geometry, even it the areas have no plies, thus no thickness with respect to the support surface. The top surface generated from this ITA group contains these areas with no thickness. Make sure the Not Thickness Area does not intersect a ply contour.

Extend the limits of the ITA Area:

User Define: Select an Extended limit (Contour or Composites geometry), and an optional Start EOP (Contour or Composites geometry) to specify the side of the ITA to extend. If you do not select a Start EOP, it is computed as the full ply boundary of all selected plies groups. Start EOP and Extended limit must be larger than all selected plies. Auto: Enter an offset value (Extended limit and Start EOP are automatically computed). The offset value cannot result in a top surface larger than the support surface. Auto does not support multi-domains EOP.

Click Show Other Outputs:

Select the Generate shell boundaries checkbox to compute shell boundaries automatically for each iso-thickness area shell. By default, Generate shell boundaries is not selected. Select the Generate offset surface checkbox to compute an offset surface automatically for each iso-thickness area shell. By default, Generate offset surface is not selected. It is available only in creation mode.

Under Modifiers, define an additional thickness.

It is entered as a ratio of the current thickness, e.g. 0.1 means 10% of the current thickness. In creation mode, it defines the additional thickness of all the iso-thickness areas of the group. In edition mode: If an additional thickness previously applied to all the iso-thickness areas of the group, the modified additional thickness applies to all the iso-thickness areas of the group. If an additional thickness applied only to some iso-thickness areas of the group, you can choose to apply the modification only to those iso-thickness areas or to all iso-thickness areas of the group. By default, Additional thickness ratio is set to 0.

Click Preview to check any changes.
The edges of the iso-thickness areas that correspond to the bottom slopes are highlighted in green.

Click OK to validate and exit the dialog box.

The iso-thickness areas group and the iso-thickness areas are created. The contour of the iso-thickness area is relimited by the bottom of the ramp (i.e. last ply+1 on ramp support) if the plies are created with the grid approach (i.e. if they are based on ramp support). In that case, the iso-thickness area turns yellow. If the iso-thickness area cannot be relimited by the bottom of the ramp, it turns pink (unless you chose to ignore the ramp supports). A warning is issued if an iso-thickness area needs to be reworked. You can modify the shape of an iso-thickness area before creating the solid. When the core sample point of an iso-thickness area may have become invalid, a mask at the iso-thickness area node indicates that the feature needs to be updated. If you modify an iso-thickness area, and add or modify core sample points, iso-thickness areas that have not been impacted do not need to be recomputed.

Double-click the iso-thickness areas group to edit it. 

Double-click an iso-thickness area to edit it.

Bottom of slope computation with Ramp Support cuve only prevents the relimitation of iso-thickness area shell by recomputed bottom curves, i.e. when ramp supports curves could not be used. Point indication and Point selection are the same as described in the main dialog box.    Additional thickness ratio defines an additional thickness as a ratio of thickness similar to the one in group panel but specific to current iso-thickness area.

Right-click an Iso-Thickness Shell to access its contextual menu