Tips for Creating Draft Features

This section provides information on the pulling direction selected for creating draft features.

• You can draft several faces using a pulling direction normal to the neutral element. To do so, you can do the following:
  • From the Refine section of the action bar, click Draft and first select the neutral element of your choice. The pulling direction that appears is then normal to the neutral element. Select the face to be drafted and click OK to create your first draft.
  • Now, to create the other drafts in the same 3D shape, note that by default the app uses the same pulling direction as the one specified for creating your first draft. As designers usually use a unique pulling direction, you do not need to redefine your pulling direction.
  • The same pulling direction that you specified for creating the previous draft is used for the next draft. This pulling direction based on the previously created draft appears only when you define it explicitly in the previous draft and not applied automatically due to the selection of the neutral element.
• You can dock the pulling direction arrow on the upper-right corner in the 3D area. To do so, right-click the pulling direction arrow and select Display indicator frozen on the screen. To undock it, you can right-click the pulling direction arrow and select Display indicator floating in 3D.

If you perform a difficult draft operation, for example resulting in twisted faces, you can use the Deactivate and Extract Geometry commands to solve your difficulties.

The Extract capability lets you generate separate elements from the initial geometry, without deleting the geometry.

When the app informs you via an error message window that your operation cannot be properly performed, closing the window displays a new dialog box providing you with a solution: you can deactivate the feature and extract its geometry.

After clicking Yes to confirm these operations, the feature appears as deactivated in the tree. A node Extracted Geometry (Feature.1) is displayed in the tree too.

This section provides workarounds to avoid intersecting draft skin faces.

When performing a basic draft feature, the preview shows that the draft skin faces intersect.

This section provides workaround to ensure that the draft faces are trimmed.

The preview shows that the draft skin does not cover the face you want to draft .

This section provides workarounds to add and remove material at the same time.

You perform a neutral draft operation on a simple pad. Because the chosen pulling direction is not normal to the neutral element, the app both needs to remove material from one 3D shape area, and add material to another area of the shape.

Complete cylinder: the draft angle is less than angle between pulling direction and cylinder axis .

The previews shows that the draft skin adds and removes material.

This section provides workarounds to avoid extra large draft skins.

If you enter a large draft angle value. Previewing the feature shows that the draft skin is too large.

The app issues an error message. Clicking on this message shows that a relimitation track is not long enough. This indicates that the corresponding red relimitation surface has not been extrapolated enough.

The extrapolation of the relimitation surface is deliberately limited so as not to go beyond a computed 3D box. Most often, industrial draft angle values are relatively small so that extrapolating surfaces very far is not necessary.

This section provides workaround to draft the faces separated by a concave edge.

You draft faces using a parting element located above the neutral element and you use a positive angle value.

Additionally, the faces to be drafted are separated by a concave edge as shown by the white arrow .

An error message is issued. The app cannot compute the draft feature, even if you try to perform two draft operations.