Training Material

Basic Course
- Overall Comprehension -

























July, 2010
Copyright INUS Technology, Inc.
All rights reserved

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Copyright I NUS Technology, I nc. All rights reserved.
Rapidform User Guide & Tutorial

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1. Overall Comprehension
1.1 Terminology
Model a single document made up of mesh or features
Feature individual shapes and geometric elements that construct a
model
Mesh triangulated scan data or FEM mesh data that contains poly-
face, poly-vertex, poly-edge or boundary





Region Group a group or region made up of poly-faces. Regions
assist in alignment of the mesh data to the global coordinate system
and in the selection of a region of interest for extracting the design
intent and converting it to a surface.



Solid body a B-rep entity that has both geometry and topology
information

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Surface body a zero thickness 3D entity with edge boundaries




Sketch a set of 2D objects (line, rectangle, circle, arc, ellipse, spline,
etc) on a plane, a face or a planar cross-section of the mesh

Geometric Constraints
Geometric constraints constrain the relation between sketch
geometries.
Geometric relations are the rules that control the behavior of sketch
geometry.
Geometric relations help capture the design intent.


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3D Sketch a set of 3D curves in space or on mesh faces







Ref. Geometry a geometry used to assist in creating features

Redesign Assistant for design intent extraction

Ref. Point : extraction, circle/sphere center, projection, intersection
Ref. Vector : extraction, cylinder/cone axis, revolving/extrusion axis,
Intersection
Ref. Plane : extraction, projection, offset, rotation, tangent,
orthogonal, mirror
Ref. Polyline : intersection, projection, silhouette, fillet, sweep, bead
line, pipe, parting line, boundary, revolving/extrusion profile
Ref. Coordinate : extraction, intersection, tangent


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1.2 User Interface




1.3 Mode
The mode is a group of working environment for entities such as mesh, region, and

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sketch. If you enter a mode, icons on the toolbar are changed related to the mode.
For example if you enter the Mesh mode, functions that are applicable to the current
mesh appear on the toolbar. When you exit the mode, you can confirm all changes or
cancel them.



Mesh In Mesh Mode, you can heal and edit mesh boundaries, and
Poly-Faces/Vertices. You can regenerate mesh triangles for FEM, RP
or Machining. You also can edit the color or texture of a mesh using
various texture edit tools.

Region Group In Region Group Mode, you can automatically divide
features into colored region as well as manually edit the regions into
groups.

Point Cloud In Point Cloud Mode, You can edit or enhance point
clouds. You can also remove noisy poly-vertices and perform sampling
or smoothing operations.

Mesh Sketch In Mesh Sketch Mode, you can create 2D sketches
(lines, arcs, circles, etc.) based on a mesh. These sketches are used
for creating a solid or surface body.

Sketch In Sketch Mode, you can create 2D sketches (lines, arcs,
circles, etc.) without a mesh. This Sketch Mode resembles as other 3D
CAD modelers.

3D Mesh Sketch In 3D Mesh Sketch Mode, you can create 3D
curves on a mesh. Curves are automatically projected onto the mesh.

3D Sketch In 3D Sketch Mode, you can create 3D curves in 3D
space. These curves can be used for creating a surface or solid body.


1.4 Hot Key

Ctrl + 1, 2, ,9, 0 Show/Hide entities (mesh, region, , coordinate)

F12 Toggles key to maximize the Model View and hide other panels.

Ctrl + Space Repeat the last command.

Shift + Z, X Toggle key to Zoom Area, Zoom Previous.

Ctrl + F, W Zoom Fit, Toggle key to pop-up the PIP (Picture In

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Picture) window.

F5, F6, F7, F8 Mesh display mode.

Shift + A, N, I Select All/None/Inverse.

Ctrl + Z, Y Undo, Redo.

Del Delete selected entities.

Ctrl + Shift + A Align view to a plane, a face, a sketch plane, a edge,
a poly-face, a curve, etc.



1.5 Smart Selection & Select Filter

Using Select Filter Toolbar

Limits selection by the entity type.



Smart Selection

Default selection when no filters are specified.
Works smartly according to the mode and the current situation.

Selection from overlapped entities
Holding down the left mouse button for a moment and releasing, then list
box which shows overlapped entities under the mouse position appears.
You can select an entity from the list box.




1.6 Accuracy Analyzer
Analyzes the accuracy of CAD model to the mesh data.
Monitors the deviation between the mesh and features generated

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or to be generated.
Displays a color map or displacement vector.
Guides modeling within acceptable tolerance using intuitive
tolerance settings.

In Default mode behavior Displays the deviation between
surface/solid bodies and the mesh.

In Mesh mode behavior Displays the deviation between the original
mesh and the modified mesh in the mode.

In Mesh Sketch mode behavior Displays the deviation between
sketch entities and section segment of the mesh/point cloud.

In Sketch mode behavior Displays the geometric property of sketch
entities.

In 3D Mesh Sketch mode behavior Displays the deviation and
geometric property of 3d sketch entities.

In 3D Sketch mode behavior Displays the deviation and geometric
property of 3d sketch entities.





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1.7 Aligning Mesh to Coordinate System

How do we define a modeling coordinate system?





Using too few feature specific vectors to derive the axes of
global modeling coordinate system may lead undesirable
deviation error.




3 ways of controlling deviation error

1. Auto-alignment
The command finds an optimal global
coordinate system using all feature
specific vectors which can minimize the
peak deviation error and also the sum of
it.



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2. Create vectors feature-by-
feature
Interactively search for directional
vectors as CAD modeling feature
parameters using various automated
tools. Each vectors axis may deviate
from the axes of the global coordinate
system.





3. Mesh-fit surfacing
Give up the parametric feature modeling
when the deviation is the primary concern.