Drag Geometry

Drag surfaces, nodes, or lines along their normal direction, a vector, or another line.

  1. From the Geometry ribbon, Drag/Spin tool group, click the Drag tool.


    Figure 1.
  2. Optional: On the guide bar, click to define additional options.
  3. Choose between Surfaces, Nodes, or Lines using the guide bar selector.
    Note: If Nodes is selected, a line will be drawn through the specified nodes before dragging.
  4. Select surfaces/nodes/lines and drag in the following ways:
    • Click to drag in a normal direction or click to define a direction using the Vector tool. Once a direction is defined, manipulate the slider or enter a value in the microdialog.
    • Activate the Guides selector to drag along selected guiding lines. Use the options in the microdialog to define how the geometry is dragged.
      Fixed Frame
      The geometry is only translated during the drag, not rotated.
      Line Tangent
      In addition to the translation of the fixed frame option, the geometry is also rotated in the same way that the tangent of the line list rotates.
      Frenet Frame
      In addition to the translation and rotation of the Line Tangent option, the geometry also rotates around the line list tangent axis in the same way as the curvature vector rotates.

      The Frenet Frame option does not work well when the curvature of the line list is not smooth or includes large jumps.

      Reverse Direction
      Defines the drag in the opposite direction.
  5. On the guide bar, click one of the following:
    • - Save changes and stay in the tool
    • - Save changes and close the tool
    • - Exit the tool without saving changes

Auto-Trim

Use the auto-trim option in the microdialog when dragging nodes and lines.

While dragging lines or nodes, if a continuous surface or mesh is intersected and this option is ON, the newly created surfaces are trimmed at the intersection. The auto-trim option works for both geometry intersecting geometry and mesh. It also works for FE topology intersecting FE topology.

Figure 2. Surfaces intersecting with surfaces
Figure 3. Surfaces intersecting with mesh
Note: With the auto-trim option ON, if the intersecting mesh or surfaces are not continuous and have gaps as shown in Figure 4, then the resulting surfaces can’t be trimmed completely. However, it will create trim lines as shown in Figure 5. But, since the complete surface is not trimmed, it wont be deleted.


Figure 4.


Figure 5.
When dragging lines, an option is available in the guide bar menu () that allows you to stitch trimmed surfaces to the target surfaces. Note that option is only applicable if auto-trim is turned ON.


Figure 6. Input lines


Figure 7. Stitch trimmed surfaces ON


Figure 8. Stitch trimmed surfaces OFF