Thicken/Offset dialog box

Controls face thickness and surface offsets.

Access

Ribbon: 3D Model tab Modify panel Thicken/Offset

Adds or removes thickness to faces of a part or a quilt, creates an offset surface from a part face or surface , or creates a solid.

Thicken/Offset tab

Sets requirements for a thicken or offset feature.

Select

Specifies faces to thicken, or faces from which to create an offset surface.

Solids

If there is more than one solid body present, selects the participating body.

Select mode

Filters geometry so that selections are restricted to individual faces or a quilt. You can select multiple connected faces or a quilt, but not mixed faces and quilts.

Distance

Specifies thickness of the thicken feature, or specifies distance for the offset feature.

When the output is a surface, the offset distance can be zero (to copy a surface or individual faces from a solid model or surface).

Output

Specifies whether the feature is a solid or a surface. The default selection is a solid.

Operation

Specifies the type of the operation.

Join

Adds the volume created by the thicken feature to the solid part.

Cut

Removes the volume created by the thicken feature from the solid part.

Intersect

Creates a feature from the shared volume of the Thicken feature and the solid part. Material not included in the shared volume is deleted.

New solid

Creates a solid body. If the thicken operation is the first solid feature in a part file, this selection is the default. Select to create a body in a part file with existing solid bodies. Each body is an independent collection of features separate from other bodies. A body can share features with other bodies.

Direction

Extends the thickness or offset feature in either direction, or equally in both directions.

Automatic Blending

A reblending technology that automatically moves adjacent tangential faces, and creates new blends, if necessary. It is active by default in the part modeling environment.

The following is a model with a thicken operation performed with and without automatic blending.

No Automatic Blending

Automatic Blending Enabled

Automatic Blending is available if solid faces are selected for a Thickness operation. It is also active when the Thickness feature extends in the positive or negative direction, but not when the feature extends equally in both directions.

When automatic blending is enabled, the following Thicken functions are not available:

• Join, Cut, or Intersect
• New Solid
• Equal distance in both directions
• Surface
• Quilt

More tab

Provides a method for selecting chained part faces or creation of surfaces with sides. Also enables and sets characteristics of approximate offset solutions.

Automatic Face Chain

Specifies multiple tangent continuous faces to thicken. All selected faces thicken with the same Boolean operation and direction. Default setting is Off.

Create Vertical Surfaces

For offset features, creates vertical, or side faces connecting the offset faces to the original quilt. Vertical surfaces are created only at internal surface edges, not at boundary edges of surfaces. Default setting is Off.

Vertical surfaces cannot join an offset surface to the solid part.

Allow approximation

When no precise solution exists, allows a deviation from the specified thickness while computing the offset feature. A precise solution creates an offset surface where each point on the original surface has a corresponding point on the offset surface. The distance between these two points is the specified distance.

Select whether to allow an approximate solution, and then click the arrow to select the deviation type from the list.

• Mean deviation is divided to fall both above and below the specified distance.
• Never too thin preserves minimum distance. The deviation must fall above the specified distance.
• Never too thick preserves maximum distance. The deviation must fall below the specified distance.

Optimized

Computes using a reasonable tolerance and minimal compute time.

Specify tolerance

Computes using a tolerance that you specify. Sometimes requires considerable computation time.