About Stitching (Repair and Construction)
Surfaces that originate in other CAD systems can have data inconsistencies or other irregularities that require repair. For best results, analyze surfaces before using them in the part environment. In the repair environment, use the Find Errors command; in the construction environment, use the Quality Check command.
Stitching in Repair, Construction, and Part Environments
The Stitch command differs in its capabilities and results in the repair and part environments:
- Surfaces
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- Repair environment
- Uses only surfaces.
- Construction environment
- Uses only construction surfaces.
- Part environment
- Uses only surfaces and quilts.
- Operations
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- Repair, construction, and part environment
- Analyzes and marks surface edges to show which can be successfully stitched into a quilt. Specialized tools repair data errors.
- Browser
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- Repair, Construction environments
- No feature created. Operations are not parametric and have no history.
- Part environment
- Stitched surfaces create a stitch feature and place an icon in the browser. Like other features, can be used in parametric editing operations, such as suppressed rollbacks.
Advantage to Selecting All Surfaces
In most cases, stitch all surfaces into a quilt or solid body in the repair or construction environment. (In the construction environment, you can then copy it to the part environment as a single body, or if necessary, a few bodies. In this case, use the All Surfaces option. To improve processing speed, this option does not highlight each selected surface in the graphics window.)
Once selected, you can analyze surfaces to identify the faces that cannot be stitched or have gaps, and then stitch the eligible surfaces.
Note: During the stitch operation, the outer edges of the selected surfaces are considered. When stitching, be sure to select all the surrounding surfaces so they are evaluated in the stitch. Selecting only two surfaces at a time can yield unwanted results.
Using Surfaces That Cannot Be Stitched into Quilt
When you use Stitch to analyze surfaces in the repair environment, the analysis results are shown in the preview as color-marked surface edges.
- Black edges are stitched to adjacent surfaces to form a quilt.
- Red edges in a quilt indicate free edges of a surface. Red edges also indicate the outer edge of the quilt if the quilt does not enclose a volume.
- Magenta edges are stitched to adjacent edges, but the joined edges are not tangent. You can use the surfaces; however, the near-tangent edges may not be suitable for some design operations, such as creating a shell.
If necessary, repair the surfaces to remove gaps or to make sure the edges fall within tolerances to create a quilt successfully.
Tip: You cannot edit composite surfaces outside of the repair environment. Make sure quilt surfaces exist for edits required in the part environment.
Group Surfaces or Transfer to Different Group (Repair Environment Only)
In the repair environment, use the Transfer Surface command to select faces or bodies and move to a new composite or stitch to a selected body. You can also right-click a quilt in the browser and use the context menu command Add Surface to stitch a selected surface to the active quilt.