Creating Characteristic Lines

Characteristic Lines easily creates curves on a support mesh, to be used in a network of curves.. Characteristic Lines processes a mesh analysis and displays characteristic lines locations.

  1. Hover over the mesh.
    When the pointer is over a characteristic line location, a preview is proposed, with one color for convex areas and another for concave areas.
    Tip: By default, Characteristic Lines identifies sharp characteristic lines (areas with a very small curvature radius) or smooth characteristic lines (areas with a larger curvature radius such as fillets). Select Ignore large radius to focus on sharp characteristic lines only.
  2. Click to validate the characteristic line.
  3. Place the pointer over a characteristic line.
    1. Click a location to split the characteristic line at that pick location.
    2. Press the Delete key or right-click and click to delete a characteristic line.
    3. Click to merge the characteristic line with the closest extremity.

      You can merge two characteristic lines.

  4. Under Output, select the type of curves to create.
    • for fictive edge (Selected by default).
    • for fillets.

    Notes:
    • When creating fictive edges, the distribution of points based on the curvature is not supported, only the equidistant distribution is.
    • The output type applies to all the characteristic lines generated in one shot.

  5. Optional: Apply the same radius to all output fillets.

    Tips:
    • Split the longer characteristic lines in pieces to produce smoother curves and also smoother surface afterward.
    • Select Apply same radius to ensure that all the pieces use the same radius.
    • Edit this parameter from the tree when required afterward.
    • At creation time, define a formula referencing an external parameter (for example myFilletRadius) to edit and fine-tune all the generated fillets (and all connected curves) in one shot.

  6. Click Compute to generate the characteristic lines.
    Edit mode is automatically started to ease the tuning of the generated characteristic lines.

 

See Also
More help on this topic