Drag Surfaces, Node Lists, or Lines

Drag surfaces, nodes, or lines along their normal direction, a vector, or another line.

  1. From the Geometry ribbon, Drag/Spin tool group, click the Drag tool.


    Figure 1.
  2. Optional: On the guide bar, click to define additional options.
  3. Choose between Surfaces, Nodes, or Lines using the guide bar selector.
    Note: If Nodes is selected, a line will be drawn through the specified nodes before dragging.
  4. Select surfaces/nodes/lines and drag in the following ways:
    • Drag in a normal direction by manipulating the slider or entering a value in the microdialog.

      Click in the microdialog to define a direction using the Vector tool. Once a direction has been defined, press Esc.

    • Activate the Guides selector to drag along selected guiding lines. Use the options in the microdialog to define how the geometry is dragged.
      Fixed Frame
      The geometry is only translated during the drag, not rotated.
      Line Tangent
      In addition to the translation of the fixed frame option, the geometry is also rotated in the same way that the tangent of the line list rotates.
      Frenet Frame
      In addition to the translation and rotation of the Line Tangent option, the geometry also rotates around the line list tangent axis in the same way as the curvature vector rotates.

      The Frenet Frame option does not work well when the curvature of the line list is not smooth or includes large jumps.

      Reverse Direction
      Defines the drag in the opposite direction.
  5. On the guide bar, click one of the following:
    • - Save changes and stay in the tool
    • - Save changes and close the tool
    • - Exit the tool without saving changes


Figure 2.

Drag Tool

An overview of the Drag tool.



Figure 3.

Use the Drag tool to drag surfaces or lines along their normal, a vector, or another line.

Access
Go to Geometry > Drag/Spin > Drag.

Options

Merge input lines
Merge input lines into a smooth line to create a continuous surface.
Create in
Select which component newly creates surfaces/solids are placed in.
Keep connectivity
Maintain connectivity of the input surfaces to any attached surfaces.
Merge solids at shared surfaces
Create a single solid with merged faces at the shared edge locations.
Inflate
Extrude the surface in both directions by half of the specified thickness.