About Surfaces in Repair and Construction

You can stitch and unstitch surfaces, reverse the normal direction, extend a face, and break or trim intersecting faces.

In the repair and construction environments, specialized commands help you analyze errors in imported surfaces and repair the data.

Imported Surfaces in the Repair Environment

After making repairs, you can use the surfaces or solid bodies in the part environment. If the surface or solid has errors, you can still use the data in some operations.

Imported Surfaces in the Construction Environment

After importing surfaces to the construction environment, you must promote the surfaces to the part environment before you can use them in parametric operations (or see the data in assemblies in Inventor).

Inventor only:

• To analyze and promote surfaces to the part environment automatically upon import, select Auto Stitch and Promote in the Import Options dialog (Construction Group Mapping must also be selected), or select Composite Feature Mapping as the import destination.
• When Auto Stitch and Promote is turned on, Inventor attempts to stitch surfaces into a quilt or solid. If the surfaces can be stitched into a single quilt or body, they are then promoted to the part environment. If surfaces cannot be stitched into a single quilt or solid body, they are left in the construction environment.

Workflows in the Construction Environment

If you selected Construction Group Mapping and deselected Auto Stitch and Promote during import, imported surfaces and wireframes are always placed in the construction environment, where you can analyze errors and repair the data .

Later, you can use the Stitch and Copy Object commands to promote selected surfaces or solid bodies to the part environment. Even if the surface or solid has errors, you may still be able to use the data in some operations.