Product: Abaqus/CAE
Benefits: You can now use orphan element faces to create geometric faces and, in turn, entire parts.
Description: You can create geometric faces that follow the contour of orphan element faces. In addition to selecting orphan element faces individually and by angle, you can use the following new selection methods to choose orphan element faces from which to create new geometry:
Limiting angle: Enter a maximum angle, and pick a starting element face; Abaqus/CAE measures the angle from the selected face to each adjacent face. Selection continues outward from the picked face until the measured angle with the original face is exceeded.
Layer: Specify a number of layers, and pick a starting element face; Abaqus/CAE selects element faces radiating out from one that you selected up to the number of layers. Selection continues until the number of layers is reached or there are no more orphan element faces in a particular direction.
Analytic: Pick a starting element face, and Abaqus/CAE adds all faces that it determines to be part of the same analytic shape. Analytic shapes include planes, cylinders, cones, spheres, and tori.
As you add faces, Abaqus/CAE stitches new faces to any existing geometry to produce a shell part. Figure 3–6 shows an orphan mesh part and the same part with most faces converted into geometry. When you are finished creating new faces, you can use the other tools in the Geometry Edit toolset to repair the geometry if needed. Each face is created as a separate feature, and you cannot edit the faces that you create from element faces. However, you can add new geometry features, create a solid from the shell part, suppress or delete the orphan mesh, and create a new mesh for the part.A related enhancement in this release allows you to use orphan mesh faces as a sketch plane (for more information, see “Combining orphan and native mesh features in a model,” Section 12.2).
Part module: ToolsGeometry Edit: Face: From element faces
