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Spherical Clipping panel

Spherical Clipping panel

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Spherical Clipping panel

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Use the Spherical Clipping panel to focus on specific areas of the model by displaying only the portions of a model inside a three-dimensional spherical volume, while masking everything outside the sphere.

If you want to work on a small section of a large model without masking or turning off any entities, enable the clipping and pick the center and the radius of the clipping sphere.  Once you have completed working with the clipped section, turn off the clipping or select a new clipping center.  This allows you to walk through your model while concentrating on small sections at a time.  The clipping information is stored along with the model in the database (.hm) file.  The auto fit option automatically fits the clipped model to the display after you choose a new center or radius.

Notes

•Individual elements are not partially clipped.  An element is displayed if its centroid is in the clipping sphere.  (The same applies for individual segments of a contact surface.)
•Geometric entities such as surfaces, lines, and so on are partially clipped.
•Clipping affects the entities that you can individually pick on the screen.  Only entities that are in the clipping sphere can be picked. For instance, you cannot pick a node that is on the outside edge of an element that is partially clipped (even though the entire element is shown on the screen).
•Clipping does not affect the extended entity selection.  For instance, if clipping is enabled to show only a few of the displayed surfaces and you choose all displayed surfaces (by extended entity selection) to automesh; all the displayed surfaces will be meshed (as if clipping is disabled).  A visual clue of this can be seen as surfaces that are outside the clipping region are highlighted (until you redraw the screen).
•While importing a database file into an existing model, the model clipping that currently exists in the session (not the one imported) is honored.
•Make sure you have the correct clipping center and radius.  Otherwise your model may not appear on the screen, leading to confusion.  For instance, if an imported model fell outside the clipping radius (and was thus invisible) you might think the import failed.
•The center and radius of clipping are stored even when clipping is disabled.  When clipping is re-enabled it returns to the previous setting.
•You can also "pan" the sphere in the plane of your monitor screen by left-clicking.  The sphere re-centers on the point clicked.  If you have use the keep centered option, the sphere remains fixed but the model pans to center the point at which you clicked.
•You can use the mouse in the graphics area to increase or decrease the sphere’s radius.  Right-clicking anywhere in the graphics area resets the sphere’s radius to the distance between the sphere’s current center and the point that you right-clicked.  In this way, right-clicking inside the sphere decreases its radius, while right-clicking outside of it increases the radius.

 

Subpanels and Inputs

There are no subpanels on the Spherical Clipping panel. All inputs and command buttons are located on the main panel.

 

Panel Inputs

Input

Action

clipping radius

This value determines the base radius of the clipping sphere.

modify by factor

Select a number. You can also right-click the number to decrease it, or left-click to increase it.

When you use the multiply or divide buttons to increase or decrease the size of the clipping sphere, the sphere’s clipping radius is multiplied or divided by this number.

auto fit

The view will always pan and zoom upon resizing the sphere, so that the visible (non-clipped) portions of the model always fill the graphics area.

keep centered

The clipping sphere will remain centered on-screen.

clip boundary elements

 

 

Command Buttons

The following action buttons appear:

Input

Action

enable

The model is clipped according to the sphere settings that you specified.

previous settings

Return to the previous settings.

return

Exits the panel.

 

See Also:

Alphabetical List of Panels