Import Diagnostics Overview
Import diagnostics repairs faulty surfaces, knits repaired surfaces
into closed bodies, and makes closed bodies into solids.
To initiate Import Diagnostics:
When you
import a model with faults, a message asks if you want to run Import Diagnostics.
Click Yes.
With a
model open, click Import Diagnostics
(Tools toolbar) or Tools,
Import Diagnostics.
The Import Diagnostics
PropertyManager opens.
This repair capability is needed because imported surface data often
has problems that prevent surfaces from being converted into valid solids.
These problems include:
Bad surface geometry.
Bad surface topology (trim curves).
Adjacent surfaces whose edges are close to each
other but do not meet, thus creating gaps between the surfaces.
Import Diagnostics finds problems by:
Running the check used in Tools,
Check, plus
Running additional checks, such as overlapping
surfaces, plus
Checking for accurate, unsimplified surfaces,
which are B-splines that are planar, cylindrical, and so on and therefore
can be replaced with equivalent analytic surfaces, improving performance
and making the model easier to reference.
Accurate
is defined by a tolerance of < 10-8.
Searching for less accurate faces (between 10-5
and 10-8) would be prohibitively
slow, but you can manually select faces and click Fix
for the system to convert the faces to analytic surfaces if possible.
The system also replaces two selected cylinder halves with the equivalent
full cylinder.
Although B-splines are not strictly a problem (since B-spline surfaces
can be valid), replacing them with equivalent analytic surfaces makes
the model more usable in SolidWorks. For example, you can create concentric
mates only to analytic cylinders, not to B-splines that happen to be cylindrical.
Import Diagnostics repairs errors in geometry (the underlying surface)
and topology (the boundaries) of faces by doing one or more of the following:
Recreating the trim boundaries of a face based
on the surrounding geometry (which often fixes overlapping faces).
Trimming away defective portions of faces (for
cases in which the defective portion is not used in the model).
Removing the face and using the gap repair algorithm
to fill the resulting hole (a last resort).
Import Diagnostics eliminates gaps between adjacent faces by doing one
or more of the following:
Replacing two close but non-intersecting edges
with one "tolerant" edge.
Creating a fill surface or lofted surface to fill
the gap.
Extending two adjacent faces into each other to
eliminate the gap.
Additional functionality:
Converts unsimplified surfaces into analytic surfaces.
Knits repaired faces into the rest of the surface
body, if possible.
Converts the body into a solid if the surface
body is closed (without gaps). This is done automatically when you click
OK in the dialog box.
General approach to using the Import
Diagnostics PropertyManager.
Click Attempt to Heal All.
Repair
faces. Right-click a face in the list and select a command.
Repair
gaps. Right-click a gap in the list and select a command or the Gap Closer tool.