Creating Plies Sections

You can create section views of the stacking or of plies, without exploding the plies.

You can create:

  • Sections in one or several planes.
  • Sections along one or several curves.
  • Whole sections or portions.
  • As realistic sections or as a schematic view.

You can position cores and apply a scale factor to the cores.

Note: The case where the plies group contains plies with its draping direction and plies with another draping direction (some plies are above the surface, others are below the surface) is not supported. This case requires that you create two plies group, each with one draping direction.

The sections are created as features: They are marked as not up to date when the orientation, contour, material, or stacking order of the plies, or the sectioning elements are modified. Standard update is available.

Information flags are available. They can be moved or hidden.

Note: This task is available in Composites Design, Composites Manufacturing Preparation and Composites Insight.

  1. From the Review section of the action bar, click Plies Section .
  2. Select the stacking or plies groups to section.
  3. Select or create (context menu) the sectioning elements.
    The sections are computed along the whole intersections of the sectioning elements and the support surface (dotted lines).
    • An information flag is attached to each sectioning element.
    • Handles are attached to each end of the dotted lines.
  4. Move the information flags as required.
  5. Optional: Use the handles to limit the computation to a portion of the dotted lines.
  6. Select the Section type.
    • Realistic

    • Schematic: This option does not create realistic ramps, making the computation time shorter. It is sufficient in most cases.

  7. Select a Display type.
    • Surfacic: Each ply section is a planar surface:

    • Block Linear: Each ply section is a closed contour:

    • Light Linear: Each ply section is a curve:

  8. Optional: Key in a Scale factor by which the thickness of the element (ply or insert) is multiplied in the section view as shown by the arrow in the picture below:

    The Scale factor introduces a deformation of the section as shown below:

    • At the top, the Scale factor is equal to 1.
    • At the bottom, it is higher than 1.


  9. Optional: Select the Apply scale on cores check box for a better understanding of the plies when cores exist.
    • The scale factor (10) is not applied to the cores.

    • The scale factor is applied to the cores.

  10. Optional: Decide to keep the position of cores, or not.

    By default, Keep core position is not selected. In a case like this one

    this means that the section shape of the core is repositioned between the plies at the right position as shown below:

    • View of the 3D section and core as defined in 3D area:

    • View of the section only:

    However, in some cases, for example on highly curved reference surfaces, or core shapes, the repositioning of the core in the 3D section is impossible.

    In such cases, when the core is designed at its correct position, for example on the top surface of the plies below the core, repositioning is not required. Selecting Keep core position provides a correct result.

  11. Click Apply.
    A preview of the sections is displayed.
  12. Click OK.
    • The sections are created in the work area.
    • If it did not already exist, a Review tools is created in the tree.
    • A 3D Sections node is created under Review tools.
    • Each time you create a set of sections, it is added to the 3D Sections node, as 3D Section.x
    • This set contains the created sections, named Section of Ply.x or Section of Cut-piece.x.
    Notes:
    • The following two types of cores are not supported:
      • Cores with concave sides:

      • Cores with this shape

        are deformed into

    • Ramps tangent to the normal of the reference curve can lead to instabilities:

      or

    • Ply Sections in Drawings: If a Drawing view points to a ply section and corresponds to the same plane as the ply section, the ply section is visible in the Drawing as illustrated below.
      • Surfacic or block linear ply section:

      • Light linear ply section:

  13. Double-click a section or a set of sections to edit the sections.

    If you open a set of sections created with a previous version, an information message appears. Recreate the sections to take full advantage of the newer version.