About Gap Analysis

This section deals with basic concepts you should know before beginning with analyzing gaps.

See Also
Performing a Gap Analysis
Gap Analysis Dialog Box

The outer edge of a surface cluster is often filleted with a certain radius. The gap is the shortest distance between the edge fillets of two adjacent surface clusters. According to the perspective, the gap seems to be wider or narrower.

This analysis function can be used to check how the gap looks from a certain view, and whether it is homogenous, that means whether the distance between the adjacent surface clusters is always equal along the gap length.

For this purpose, true sections through the surfaces are generated along a guide curve by means of which distance values between source and target surface are calculated.

Depending on the coordinate system set, the values that are not visible (e. g. at a surface intersection) will be set to 0 (option System: Model) or only those values that are visible viewed from the chosen plane will be taken into consideration (options System: Plane/User defined).

Notes:
  • The surface normals must be adjusted to the outside resp. in direction of the gap, as otherwise the wrong values will be taken into consideration and set to 0.
  • In a true section, the intersection line runs through the intersection point between surface edge or curve and the normal plane to the curve tangent in this point.