Creating Thick Surfaces

You can add material to a surface in two opposite directions.

Before you begin: Create a surface in Generative Shape Design.
See Also
About Thick Surfaces
In the Knowledge Base
About measuring thick surfaces
  1. From the Model or the Essentials section of the action bar, click Thick Surface .
    The Thick Surface.xdialog box appears.
  2. Select the element you want to thicken, that is the extrude element.


  3. In the 3D area, the arrows that appear on the extrude element indicate the first offset directions. If you need to reverse a direction, click the corresponding arrow.
  4. Optional: Enter the first and second offset values in the First offset and the Second offset boxes respectively.

    Note: These values will be applied to the entire selected object.

  5. Optional: Select sub-elements to be thicken in the work area and click in the Sub-elements box.
    A table containing sub-elements appears.
  6. Optional: Select the faces to apply the thicknesses and enter the respective First Offset and Second Offset values and click in the Sub-elements box.
  7. Optional: Select the Propagate faces to thick to apply the thickness to the faces tangent to the selected face.
  8. Select the Smoothing mode from the following types:

    • None: No smoothing is applied. This is the default option. The Max deviation box is unavailable.

    • Manual: Smoothing is applied as per the maximum deviation. The default value is 0.1 mm.

    • Automatic: Smoothing is applied automatically.

    Note: You can select the Disable Tangency Continuity check box to avoid tangency continuity on the lateral edges.

  9. Optional: Select one of the Regularization types on the offset surface:

    • Local: regularizes the offset surface locally to minimize the deviation.

      This option improves the number of successful computations by adding local adaptations to the offset body. As a result, new internal faces, edges or vertices may be created. However, as the distortion is local, deviation area is restrained and the deviation is lower.

    • Global: regularizes the offset surface completely. If the local regularization fails, an informative prompt is displayed and the offset surface is globally regularized.
    Important: The Regularization option is available only with the Automatic and Manual smoothing modes.

  10. Click OK.
    The surface is thickened. The tree is updated.



    Note: The resulting feature does not keep the color of the original surface.