Specify Base Surfaces

Use the Midsurfaces: Base Surfaces tool to specify a distance from the base surfaces of multiple solids that you wish to treat as if they were continuous. This will help generate separate-but-aligned midsurfaces during extraction.

In certain situations, you may need to extract a midsurface from multiple solids as if they were a single solid.

Normally, this would result in multiple midsurfaces, each one at the middle of the solid it was extracted from (and therefore not aligned with each other).

You can create aligned midsurfaces for non-aligned solids by selecting each solid and specifying its offset separately, using a different offset for each (you must know the exact dimensions of each solid to do this accurately).

  1. From the Geometry ribbon, Create tools, click Midsurfaces > Base Surfaces.


    Figure 1.
  2. Select surfaces.
  3. Optional: Define an offset value in the microdialog.
  4. Click to confirm your selection.
Tip: Click to deselect all surfaces.

Midsurfaces: Base Surfaces Tool

An overview of the Midsurfaces: Base Surfaces tool.



Figure 2.

Use the Midsurfaces: Automatic tool to extract the midsurface of sheet metal stampings, molded plastic parts with ribs, and other parts that have thickness clearly smaller than width and length.

Access
Go to Geometry > Midsurfaces > Base Surfaces.