3-matic Tutorial 8.

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/ Content
/ Content ............................................................................................................... 1
/ Introduction to 3-matic...................................................................................... 2
/ Chapter 1: Import .............................................................................................. 3
Exercise 1. Import STLs ................................................................................................ 3
Exercise 2. Import a Mimics project file .......................................................................... 4
Exercise 3. Import a CAD file of a heart valve ................................................................ 4
/ Chapter 2: Basic ................................................................................................ 6
Exercise 1. Align the heart valve with the aorta.............................................................. 6
/ Chapter 3: Analyze ............................................................................................ 9
Exercise 1. Wall Thickness Analysis .............................................................................. 9
Exercise 2. Curvature Analysis .....................................................................................10
Exercise 3. Measure and analyze using fitted primitives ...............................................11
Exercise 4. Comparison analysis ..................................................................................14
/ Chapter 4: Design ............................................................................................ 15
Exercise 1. Give the aorta a wall thickness for RP ........................................................15
Exercise 2. Aneurysm design .......................................................................................17
Exercise 3. Designing an acetabular cup ......................................................................18
/ Chapter 5: Remesh .......................................................................................... 27
Exercise 1. Remeshing .................................................................................................27
Exercise 2. Create Volume Mesh..................................................................................31
Exercise 3. Optimize the mesh .....................................................................................32
/ Chapter 6: Export ............................................................................................ 34
Exercise 1. Anatomical Reverse Engineering ...............................................................34
/ Mimics® Innovation Suite User Community .................................................. 36

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/ Introduction to 3-matic

3-matic is unique software that combines CAD tools with pre-processing (meshing) capabilities. To do
so, it works on triangulated (STL) files and as such it is extremely suitable for organic/freeform 3D data,
like the anatomical data coming from the segmentation of medical images (from Mimics). We call it
Anatomical CAD.
Import your anatomical data in 3-matic to start doing real Engineering on Anatomy, like thorough 3D
measurements and analyses, design an implant or surgical guide, or prepare the mesh for finite
element modeling.
Since 3-matic can import CAD data, but also do reverse engineering of anatomical data to CAD data,
it is perfectly complementary to your CAD package.

NOTICE ON INTENDED USE: 3-matic is intended for use as software for computer assisted design
and manufacturing of medical exo- and endo-prostheses, patient specific medical and
dental/orthodontic accessories and dental restorations.

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/ Chapter 1: Import

Exercise 1. Import STLs

1. Open a new 3-matic project.

2. Click on Import part. Select the STLs of the aorta (Aorta1 and Aorta2) and import
them together. They are positioned on the same location, since they originate from the
same dataset. No registration is necessary.
During import, split surfaces with an angle of 45°. This will make separate surfaces of all
inlets and outlets.

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Exercise 2. Import a Mimics project file

1. Open 3-matic. In the File menu, select Import part and browse to
C:\MedData\InnovationCourse\FinishedFemur.mcs. The 3D objects and CAD files are
loaded into your 3-matic project.

Exercise 3. Import a CAD file of a heart valve

In case you want to combine the STL model of the aorta with a heart valve design from a CAD
package, you can import the IGES file of this valve. The valve used in this exercise is NOT a real heart
valve; it is redesigned to resemble a common valve.
The IGES file is triangulated upon import.

1. Go to File – Import Part (Ctrl + L) and browse for ‘heart valve.igs’ file.

2. In the Import dialog, enable Fix Normals and Automatic stitching.

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/ Chapter 2. Basic
Exercise 1: Align the heart valve with the aorta
Upon import heart valve.igs, the valve will not be positioned correctly yet and needs to be aligned to
the aorta1. Use the Aorta 1 for this exercise.

1. Go to Align and choose Arc to Arc Align.

2. Fit an Arc on the aorta inlet as the fixed entity. Fit another Arc on the outer surface of the
heart valve as the moving entity. Make sure the arrows are aligned properly, to fit the
heartvalve in the right direction.

3. Choose Coincident or Coincident face to face, depending on the direction of the arrows.

4. Use Interactive Translate to finetune the positioning if necessary. Select the Object
coordinate system to translate.

Now we need to virtually attach the aorta to the valve. Therefore we will modify the aorta inlet to fit on
the heart valve.

5. Move the separated surfaces back to the Aorta part. Drag and drop the surfaces in the
active scene.

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6. Go to the Fix tab and choose Project Mesh. Select the inlet surface as entity. Method
is On Selection. As target entity select the outer surface of the valve.

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7. Apply and the result should look like this:

8. To open the inlet, delete or hide the surface.

If you want to prepare this assembly for CFD analysis, the valve still needs to be remeshed and the
nodes should match the connecting nodes on the aorta.

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/ Chapter 3: Analyze
Exercise 1. Wall Thickness Analysis
To analyze the thickness of the cortical bone, you can run a wall thickness analysis.

1. Import Finished Femur.mcs.

2. In the Analyze tab, click on the Create Wall Thickness Analysis button and set the
Maximum Wall Thickness to 10.0mm. A histogram with the wall thickness distribution will
be displayed and a range of colors will be applied on the Cortical 3D object. The green
color represents the thinner structures, while the red color corresponds to the thicker
regions. Feel free to play with the slider thresholds for better visualization.

3. Try to measure the wall thickness locally.

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Exercise 2. Curvature Analysis

For the purpose of guide design it might be interesting to analyze the curvature of the bone.

1. Select the Create Curvature Analysis button and select the Femur. Choose
Maximum curvature as Analysis type, Noise as Mesh type and set the Fitting radius to
6.0mm. Apply the operation.
A histogram with the curvature distribution is displayed and the 3D object is represented in
a range of colors. The blue color represents the regions with local convexity, while the red
color corresponds to areas of concavity.

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Exercise 3. Measure and analyze using fitted primitives

1. Click on the Rectangular Mark button in the Mark tab and select the femur head of the
Femur object. To make sure that the triangles are marked through the femur head, hold the
SHIFT button whilst selecting the femur head.

2. In the Analyze (or Design) tab, select the Create Analytical Sphere function.

3. Click on the Unmark All Marking.

4. Click on the Rectangular Mark button in the Mark tab and select the femur shaft of the
Femur object. Hold the SHIFT button to mark the triangles through the object.

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5. In the Analyze (or Design) tab, select the Create Line function. Choose the Fit ruled
surface direction as the Method and the marked triangles as Fitting entities.

6. Make resulting line longer, by using the Prolong line function in the Analyze or Design
tab.

7. Click on the Unmark All Marking.

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8. Mark the femur neck of the Remeshed_Femur object using the Rectangular Mark tool.
Make sure you hold the SHIFT button when you mark the rectangle in the neck.

9. In the Analyze (or Design) tab, select the Create Line function. Choose the Fit ruled
surface direction as the Method and the marked triangles as Fitting entities.

10. Measure the angle using the Angle measurement from the Measure toolbar. Select
the Line To Line method and indicate the two lines. Click on Apply. Hide the femur first so
that you can select the lines properly.

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Exercise 4. Comparison analysis

1. Import Aorta1 and Aorta 2 from Demo Files and split surface with 45°. (refer to Import :
Exercise 1)

2. Go to the Analyze tab to create a Part Comparison Analysis to compare the aorta at
systole (Aorta2) with the aorta at diastole (Aorta1).

3. Set the Histogram range from -3mm to 3mm.

4. Try measuring the analysis locally.

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/ Chapter 4: Design
Exercise 1. Give the aorta a wall thickness for RP

1. Import Aorta 1 from Demo Files into 3-matic with Split Surface check ON.

2. Separate the inlet and outlet surfaces to another part, so the aorta only consists of the
outer surface.

3. Select the Offset from the Design toolbar. Select the Aorta part as entity and select
solid. A thickness of 1 mm is okay for building. The picture is an example of this aorta built
on an Objet machine.

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Exercise 2. Aneurysm design

To investigate the influence of aortic aneurysms with different sizes and shapes on blood flow or
pressure, it can be interesting to be able to ‘design’ different aneurysms.

1. Import Aorta2 from Demo Files. Go to the Finish tab and select Push and Pull. Set the
distance to 5mm and the radius to 20mm. Hold Ctrl to pull on a part of the surface of the
descending aorta. Rotate the aorta to pull on all sides.

Here you see an example of a CFD analysis of blood pressure on a similar aorta:

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Exercise 3. Designing an acetabular cup

In this exercise we will use forward engineering to design a customized acetabular implant, using
patient data. This way, it is possible to create a perfectly fitting prosthesis. In the image below you see
an example of such an implant that we designed for a patient. In this exercise we will only design one
flange, but of course the method can be copied for the other flanges.

1. Import FinishFemur.mcs (refer to Import: Exercise 2)

2. First we will make a copy of the pelvic bone, therefore select the Pelvis in the database
tree, right-click and from the context menu select Duplicate. To make the original 3D
model invisible, right-click on the Pelvis 3D object and select Hide from the context menu.

3. We will now simplify the Pelvis_duplicated. Select the Create Curve function in the
Curve tab, choose as Curve Creation Method the Attached Curve option and enable Split
surfaces. Now draw a curve over the contour of the acetabulum.

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4. Select the inscribed surface and select delete from the context menu.

5. From the Design tab, select the Surface Construction tool. Create a surface based
on the created curve.

6. We will use the Analytical Sphere, we’ve fitted onto the femur head during the

analyzing exercise, as a start for the design of the acetabular cup. In Design tab,
click on the Convert Analytical Primitive to Part button and select your sphere.

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7. To give the sphere a thickness, go to the Design tab click on the Offset button. Fill in the
parameters as indicated below and click on Apply.

8. To cut the hollow sphere we will create a plane. In the Design (or Analyze) tab, select
the Create Datum Plane button. Select the Fit plane and select the created surface as
Fitting Entity.

9. You can still adjust the position of the Datum Plane. In the Align tab, select the
Interactive Translate, choose the Object coordinate system and reposition the plane to the
borders of the acetabular cavity. Make sure the plane doesn’t intersect with the edges of
the acetabulum.

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10. Cut the hollow sphere with the Datum Plane and delete the outside part. In the
Design tab select the Cut operation and select the Sphere. This finishes the design of the
acetabular cup. In the next steps we will add a flange to the design.

11. From the Sketch menu select New Sketch. Select Fit Plane as Method and as Fitting
Entity, select the surface that resulted from the Cut operation.

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12. Import the outline of the pelvic bone into the sketch and project the contours of the
acetabular cup onto the Sketch.

13. Create a line sequence on the ischium bone. Click on the Create line action button
in the Sketch tab and select Line sequence. Draw three line segments and press the
Escape key to finish.

14. Add constraints to the line segments. Click on the Parallel button.

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15. Set a distance of 7.0mm between the two parallel line segments.

16. Set a length of 15mm for each of the two parallel line segments.

17. Select the Circle Arc (3 Points). Indicate the extremities of the line segments and
the radius of the arc.

18. Make sure each of the line segments is tangent to the arc.

19. We will now project the 2D flange onto the 3D surfaces. From the Curve tab select
the Project Curve tool. The Entity will be the Sketch001 and the Target Entity will be the
Pelvis_duplicate 3D object.
We will project according to the normal of the sketch. Highlight the direction parameter
and subsequently select the Z-axis of the Sketch. Flip the direction by clicking on the
toggle direction button. Ensure to check ON the ‘Create surface sets’ checkbox. Click on
Apply to finish the operation.

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20. Merge the surfaces resulting from the projection and separate a copy of the surface to a
new part. Rename it to Flange.
NOTE: The different surfaces are easily selectable as they are separated in a surface set.

21. Move the surface over 1 mm to give it a thickness.

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22. To attach the flange to the acetabular cup select the Local Boolean operation from
the Design tab. Select the flange as Entity 1 and the outer surface of the sphere as Entity
2. Using the default Local Boolean Parameter the acetabular cup and the flange will be
united.

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23. We will use a predefined screw to create the fixation holes. Go to File – Import and
choose STL. Open Screw.stl.

24. From the Align tab select Interactive Positioning. In the Work Area select the screw
and as Method select the Object Coordinate system. You can now drag the Screw over
the surface of the flange. To create multiple holes, duplicate the screw and use the
Interactive Positioning tool to position them.

25. Merge all screws by selecting them and selecting Merge from the context menu.

26. Subtract the screws from the flange. Select the Sphere Offset as entity and the
merged screws as Subtraction Entity. Click on Apply.

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/ Chapter 5: Remesh

Exercise 1. Remeshing

1. Open 3-matic. Go to File select open project and browse to Demo Files. Open Femur.mxp.
Check the number of triangles of this part in the properties page

2. Reduce the amount of details in the femur. Click on the Smooth button in the Fix tab
and apply the default parameters.

3. Click on the Reduce button to decrease the number of triangles in the mesh. Change
the Flip threshold angle and the Geometrical error to the values indicated below.

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4. Open an Inspection Scene by selecting the object in the Scene Tree and clicking on
the Inspection Scene button in the Remesh tab.

5. In the Quality parameters, adjust the Shape measure to Height/Base (N) and in the
Histogram parameters make sure that Current measure is set to Shape measure. Adjust
the sliding bar in the histogram to 0.4. You can see that a certain percentage of the
triangles in the femur mesh present a quality lower than 0.4.

6. We will remesh the femur based on a shape quality measure of 0.4. To visualize the
triangles with a quality lower than the specified threshold, select the Color low quality
triangles checkbox. The colors of the triangles correspond to the colors of the bars in the
histogram. Therefore, the triangles with a quality lower than 0.1 are colored red and the
triangles with a
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quality close to 0.4 are colored green. The triangles with a quality higher than 0.4 present
the color of the original part.

7. The next step in the remesh protocol is the Auto-remesh. Adjust the parameters and
apply the operation. Ignore local remesh parameters.

8. We will now increase the quality threshold to 0.4 and control the maximum edge
length. Apply the Auto-Remesh function adjusting the parameters as indicated below:

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9. The last step is to reduce the number of triangles while preserving the quality.

Before Remeshing After Remeshing

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Exercise 2. Create Volume Mesh

1. Now that you have obtained a surface mesh with a quality adequate for FEA, it is time to
generate a volume mesh. Make sure you are in the 3D View and duplicate your remeshed
femur. Clip the 3D objects using the Standard Section – Y as a clipping plane, adjusting
its position.

2. In the Remesh tab, select the Create Volume Mesh button. Define the Maximum
edge length as 5.0mm and select Aspect ratio (A) as Shape measure, with a Quality
threshold of 25. Click on Apply. Ignore local volume mesh parameterrs.

Surface mesh Volume mesh

3.

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Exercise 3. Optimize the mesh

1. We now want to optimize and smooth the aorta surface mesh. Import Aorta3 from

DemoFiles . Click on Smooth in the fixing toolbar. Click on the aorta and select only
the surface. We want to keep the sharp edges at the inlets/outlets. Use the default
settings and apply 3-4 times to make it smooth like the natural aorta.

2. Reduce the amount of triangles on the whole part with the default settings.

3. Set the shape measure to skewness and Auto-remesh the part to a threshold of 0.3,
with a maximum geometrical error of 0.1 and a maximal edge length of 3 mm.

4. Smooth the surface once more with the default settings.

5. Do a final Auto-remesh to a threshold of 0.4

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6. Do a Quality Preserving triangle reduction with the same settings.

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/ Chapter 6: Export
Exercise 1: Anatomical Reverse Engineering
Medical imaging data, like CT or MRI, can be segmented to create accurate, patient-realistic, 3D
models. However, these complex, organic 3D models are generated in the STL file format, and this
format is not welcomed by traditional CAD softwares. Therefore 3-matic has an Anatomical Reverse
Engineering module. This module creates solid (C0-continuity) IGES files from your anatomical
models. And what’s even better; it does so completely automatic.

1. Import the Mimics project ‘’FinishFemur.mcs” into 3-matic.

2. Go to the Automatic Rectangular Patching option in the Surface toolbar and select Femur into
entities selection box. The part complexity is measured automatically.

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3. Go to the File menu in the main toolbar. Select Export > Iges.
Since the patching is already done, it only needs to be exported to Iges.

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/ Mimics® Innovation Suite User Community

Visit us at the Mimics Innovation Suite User Community for more tips and tricks at
http://uc.materialise.com/mimics/. Communicate with other users on the forum and stay up to date with
the latest Mimics Innovation Suite events!

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