This Highlight provides user the ability to convert Terrain body (CLDBody) into polyhedral (PH) CATBody. It also provides capability to convert Exact CATBody into PH CATBody.

Requirement origin

When a user designs a civil infrastructure user needs to design the interaction between the infrastructure and terrain precisely.

Terrain and civil infrastructures have 2 different geometric data models.

1. Terrain is mesh

2. Civil infrastructure is exact geometry (NURBS).

They cannot merge together natively and must be converted into the same geometric representation.

These conversions are tedious and time consuming. Also, there are very few operations available on mesh data.

This function provided the user capability to convert a terrain mesh into polyhedral (PH) topology as well as convert exact topology into PH topology.

What is offered & how it serves

These Polyhedral functions are available through a dedicated role. The role required is Polyhedral Modeler (PHM).

1. Convert a CLDBody into a Polyhedral (PH) CATBody.

To convert a CLDBody into a PH CATBody a new command ‘Enable for Engineering 3D Design’ is provided. This command is accessible from contextual menu on CLDGeom feature or feature inheriting from it. It is available in Civil Engineering 3D Design and Terrain Preparation app.

The input for this command is the current CLDGeom object.

The output is a new PH topology body aggregated by a GSD datum feature, with the polyhedral mask displayed on it, is created in the active set and displayed in gray.

2. Convert an Exact CATBody into a PH CATBody.

This is called a tessellation. The Tessellate command is available in Civil Engineering 3D Design app, in Wireframe & Surface section.

It enables to generate a mesh or a polyline from an exact surface or curve with a given accuracy.

This command is very useful when you have hybrid inputs for an operator that supports only identical types.

3. The ability to convert a PH CATBody into an exact discrete CATBody.

User can convert a polyhedral polyline into an exact topological polyline composed of as many edges and wires as there are bars and domains in the initial polyhedral polyline using the ‘Create Polyline’ command.

This command is available in Civil Engineering 3D Design app, in Wireframe & Surface section.

The main advantage of this command is it enables the Shape and Part design commands to a polyhedral polyline. As all the commands (for example, Sweep) are not compatible with polyhedral entities, user can use Create Polyline to convert a discrete polyline into a GSD polyline.

Note: In addition to 'create polyline' command, user can user 'Curve Smooth' command to convert the PH wires into exact smooth curve.

Video

Let us see the working of these commands through a short video.

References​​​​​​​

Online Documentation:

3D Modeling | Multi Discipline Engineering | Civil Engineering 3D Design | Working with Polyhedral Entities