Creating a Spine

Spine lets you create a spine, that is a curve normal to a list of ordered planes or planar curves. These spines are useful when creating complex surfaces such as swept, lofted, or filleted surfaces.

This task shows you how to:

Before you begin: Create a 3D shape containing at least two planes or planar profiles and two curves.

 

See Also
Working with Multi-Sections Surfaces
More help on this topic

Create a Spine based on Planes

You can create a spine using the planes.

  1. Successively select planes or planar profiles.
  2. Click Preview.
  3. You can also select a start point.

    The point is projected onto the first plane as the spine starting point, as illustrated here (point.3 is selected) except if it is already lying onto this first plane.

    • Use the context menu on the Start point box to create a point.

    • If you do not select a start point (default mode) one is computed automatically.

    • To remove a selected point, select the Computed start point check box.

  4. Select one of the elements in the dialog box, then click:
    • Replace, then select the replacing element in the geometry or the tree.
    • Remove to delete it from the spine definition.
    • Add then select a new element to be added after the last one.
  5. Click OK.
    Important: When non-planar curves are selected, their mean planes are used to compute the spine.