I. Project Background
In this prefabricated building design project, internal partition walls adopt standard precast concrete wall panels with a width of 600 mm. The wall panels are assembled and connected to the main structure via U-shaped connectors.
Key pain points during modeling: A large quantity of precast wall panels and matching U-shaped connectors require manual individual placement, which suffers from low efficiency and high error rates. For this reason, the CATIA Visual Scripting visual scripting tool is adopted to realize automatic batch layout of partition wall components. A complete implementation workflow is shared as follows.
II. Visual Script Development with CATIA Visual Scripting
The original geometric surface of partition walls serves as the core geometric input, while adjustable parameters such as surface offset and standard wall panel width are configured to build the automatic surface segmentation logic:
Batch split the partition wall surface according to the preset panel width to generate subdivided surfaces of standard dimensions;
Automatically verify the width of each subdivided surface; areas narrower than the minimum allowable width will be highlighted in red for quick identification of non-compliant segments;
Simultaneously create positioning coordinate systems required for component assembly;
Publish and output the subdivided surfaces, bottom edges of surfaces, and positioning coordinate systems uniformly for calls by subsequent modules.
Create a User Pattern custom array template based on the positioning coordinate systems output by the script. For unified management, it is recommended to collect the visual scripting program and User Pattern template into the same graphical set (example name: 设计方案).
III. Process Encapsulation: Standardized Assets via Power Copy
After debugging the full logic of surface segmentation and coordinate system generation, encapsulate the workflow into a standardized Power Copy template with the partition wall surface as the sole input condition.
Templates can be archived and managed uniformly in the Catalog Directory Browser, enabling quick access by team members and reducing redundant modeling costs.
IV. Full Workflow for Cross-User Reuse
After completing the basic surface modeling of internal walls, other designers can directly call the encapsulated Power Copy to generate all intermediate geometries with one click, including split surfaces, positioning edges, assembly coordinate systems and custom array templates.
Based on the automatically generated positioning references, batch modeling can be rapidly completed in two steps:
Instantiate the standard template of internal precast wall components relying on positioning lines to generate wall panel models in batches;
Utilize the Assembly pattern function to automatically arrange all U-shaped connecting fittings along the positioning coordinate systems.
PowerCopy Reuse and Parametric Modification：
Instantiation Modeling of Interior Wall Precast Components：
Batch Assembly of U-shaped Connectors：
V. Problems Encountered During CATIA Visual Scripting Application
It is necessary to implement the logic of "calculating the minimum distance from a spatial point to a surface, extracting the nearest projection point on the surface, and retrieving the UV parameters of the surface corresponding to this point". However, no built-in operator within CATIA Visual Scripting has been found to directly meet this requirement.
Multiple operators have been combined to form a single function. I intend to package this combination into a temporary operator for repeated reuse within the current file, without developing a user operator. This function only needs to be reused multiple times in this single file rather than across other files, yet there is no native feature available to package logic into a temporary operator.
