Creating Replace Face Features

You can replace a face or a set of tangent faces with a surface or a selected face (belonging to the same body). This capability allows you to align faces, which is sometimes a way of simplifying volumes, but also adjusts shapes prior to manufacturing operations.

This task shows you how to:

See Also
Replacing Elements

Modify Shapes

You can modify a shape by extruding one of its face up to an external surface.

  1. From the Refine section of the action bar, click Replace Face .
    The Replace Face.x dialog box appears.
  2. Select a surface as the replacing surface.


  3. Click the arrow to reverse the indicated direction.
  4. Select the 3D shape's bottom face.

    The face turns purple indicating that it will be replaced.



  5. Click OK to confirm the operation.

    The 3D shape has been reshaped and the new feature (identified as ReplaceFace.xxx) is added to the specification tree.



Replace Faces with Other Faces to Align Them

You can align a face with another face, which is sometimes a way of simplifying volumes, but also adjusts shapes prior to manufacturing operations

  1. Click Replace Face .
  2. Select the horizontal face on the smaller pad.

    The first face you select is always the replacing face. Once selected, it is shown in blue.

  3. Select the horizontal face from the left pad.
    Once selected, the face to be replaced is shown in purple.

  4. Click OK to confirm the operation.

    Both faces are aligned.



Replace Faces with Other Faces

You can replace a set of tangent faces with a set of other tangent faces.

  1. Click Replace Face .
  2. Select the horizontal face on the left.
    This face, which is the replacing face is now displayed in blue. Because it is tangent to the face produced by a fillet operation, that face is also selected and in turn includes the vertical face. Three faces are then selected as indicated by the blue color.

  3. Select the horizontal face on the right.

    Three tangent faces are selected as the faces to be replaced and are shown in purple:



  4. Click OK to confirm the operation.

    The result you obtain shows that replacing these faces affects the fillet radius value to the left.



    Important: Automatic reroute of children takes place if you replace a face by a surface with only one face. In case of complicated industrial documents containing several topological faces, manual reroute of children may be required to be done, depending on the complexity of the document.