Video: Align Surface Pattern on Shape Edited Elements

Shape edit slabs to provide a surface sloping in multiple directions.

Use the Align tool to modify the position of a surface pattern. Control if the modification are applied to the entire surface or just the selected face.

In this video learn the following:

  1. Align pattern to reference planes.
  2. Align pattern on individual faces.
  3. Align the pattern over the entire elements of a shape edited element.

Transcript

When working with slab elements, you may have a surface pattern to represent a material or condition. In this example we have a slab with a surface pattern representing tile. You can use the align tool to shift the pattern if needed. You might want the tile pattern to be aligned to the center to equalize cut tiles on either side. On the Modify tab click Align, then click the reference plane, and then the line in the pattern to align. When the slab is shape edited, because the different faces are sloping, the surface pattern may become mis-aligned. When this occurs, it may be useful to use the controls on the contextual tab of the ribbon to align surface pattern on just one face at a time.

On the Modify tab click Align, but this time before selecting a line for alignment, change the option on the contextual tab to Selected Face. Now when you align the surface pattern only the pattern on the one face will be affected. Continuing to align the surface pattern on the different faces, you can get closer to the desired result. Depending on the pattern and the slopes involved, you may always have some distortion of the pattern. Switching back to Entire Surface allows you to again control the pattern across all of the faces on the shape edited slab.

Use the pattern setting when aligning surface pattens to help you obtain the desired results when a surface has been shape edited.