About Planar Symmetry Restraints

A planar symmetry restraint forces symmetry about a selected face, edge, or point.

A planar symmetry restraint defines boundary conditions that fix certain degrees of freedom for the mesh nodes in the selected geometry. For example, you can define symmetry about a plane X=constant, which will fix the following degrees of freedom:

  • X displacement = 0
  • rotation about the Y-axis = 0
  • rotation about the Z-axis = 0

You can specify a planar symmetry geometric restriction for a topology or sizing optimization. A planar symmetry geometric restriction forces the optimized model to be symmetric about a specified plane. You can specify the plane of symmetry by selecting the axis of a coordinate system that is the normal to the plane of symmetry. You can use the global coordinate system or create a datum coordinate system.