Creating a Circular Pattern

You can create a circular pattern using Pattern. You need to define the types of parameters you want to specify so that the app will be able to compute the location of the items you copied.

This task shows you how to create a circular pattern.

See Also
About Patterns
Creating a Rectangular Pattern
Creating a User Pattern
Using the Display Only Parents Option to Retrieve a Creation Context
  1. From the Transform section of the action bar, click Pattern .
    The Pattern dialog box appears.
  2. Click Circular Pattern to access the parameters specific to this type of pattern.
  3. Select a feature to pattern.


    Important: To define a direction, you can select an edge, a line, a planar face or a plane. After selecting an edge, a line or a planar face, if necessary, you can also select a point to define the rotation center. If you select a plane, selecting a point is mandatory.
  4. Click Reference element and select the upper face to determine the rotation axis. This axis is normal to the face. An arrow indicating the direction is displayed on the functional body.
    Tip: Selecting Reverse or clicking the arrow reverses the direction.
  5. Enter the number of instances you want to obtain in the first direction.
  6. Enter an angular spacing.
    The circular pattern looks like this:

  7. Parameters lets you choose the types of parameters you want to specify so that the app will be able to compute the location of the items copied.
    These parameters are:
    • Circle & Circle spacing
    • Circle & crown thickness
    • Circle spacing and crown thickness.

    Set Circle & Circle spacing to define the parameters you want to specify.

  8. Enter a value in Circles.


  9. Enter a value to define Circle spacing.


  10. Enter a value in Row in angular direction.
    The initial protected prism as well as the instance nest to it are slightly moved in the angular direction.

    Enter a value in Radial direction to make the instances of the crown move in the radial direction.



    Important: The Radial alignment of instances option allows you to define the instance orientations. By default, the option is selected, meaning that all instances are normal to the lines tangent to the circle as illustrated below:

    If the option is cleared, all instances have the same orientation as the original feature.
  11. Click OK.


    Circular Pattern.x is added to the tree in the Solid Functional Set.x node.

    Tip: Clicking an instance once removes the instance from the specifications.