Structure Editing Overview

The structure definition, as described in the Shape creation overview page, allows the input of structure elements. However, the structures usually need to be edited afterwards. There exist, in general, three different ways to modify existing structures: Editing the History List, Editing the History Tree, and performing Local Operations on the model.

Editing the History List

The History List stores all macro language commands for each creation step.

You may edit the shapes in the History List by just selecting the corresponding line and pressing the Edit button. Afterwards, you may modify the commands directly.

Pressing the Update button in the History List will finally re-generate the modified structure.

Editing the History Tree

A very convenient way to change the shape parameters of existing shapes is to select a shape and choose the Edit Object Properties from the main menu or Properties from the context menu.

If the selected shape is still a basic shape, the shape creation dialog box for the particular shape type will open automatically and show the shape’s current parameters. You may now edit the parameters and press the OK button to re-generate the structure with the modified shape.

If the edited shape is the result of one or more boolean operations, a so called History Tree window will open. The tree shows the construction history of the selected shape, including the generation of basic shapes, transformations and boolean operations.

You may now select a particular basic shape or transform operation from the History Tree and press the Edit button. Now, either the shape creation dialog box or the transform dialog box will open. You may now edit the parameters and press the OK button to re-generate the structure with the modified parameters.

Local Operations on the Model

Editing the structures with either the History List or the History Tree requires the presence or parametric information. However, for imported models from other CAD systems, this information usually is not available.

On the other hand, sometimes only small modifications are necessary to a shape produced by complex operations. In such cases, it may also become complicated to perform the desired change by altering the elementary shapes.

In cases where some elements of the model need to be modified directly, there are two modes to help to complete this task:

Examples

image\local_ops.gif

In addition there are some more operations for applying structural changes to existing shapes:

 

Face Healing

There are various editing possibilities concerning faces and curves of a selected shape. A curve represents an edge that does not necessarily belong to any face. For example, sometimes the surface representation of imported shapes may be corrupted such that one of the following operations may be helpful in repairing and further editing the elements.

Clean Shape: (Objects Solid Healing ToolsClean Shape) This operation removes all unnecessary faces or edges from the selected shape.

Face Operations: These operations are used to modify single face elements.

Curve Operations: These operations are used to create curve elements which belong to the selected solids.

 Shape Healing

Use the healing operations (Modeling: ToolsShape ToolsHeal Shape) and (Modeling: ToolsShape ToolsHeal All Shapes)) to repair imported shapes.

See also

Shape Creation Overview, Curve Creation Overview, Face Creation Overview, Face Modifications, Face Constraints