Tolerancing Tutorial

This tutorial walks you through the steps needed to optimise a model by applying a tolerance. The file we shall use is a triangle model, bottle.dmt, kept in CopyCAD's Examples directory. This bottle has lettering around the neck, which will be partially smoothed by the tolerancing the triangles.

1. Select File - Examples from the menu bar to display the Open File dialog box.
   
   
2. Double-click on the bottle.dmt file in the Examples directory.

3. Examine the triangle model that is displayed in the Graphics window. You will see that it is half of a bottle. The triangles are dense on the bottom, sides and neck of the bottle.
   
   
4. You can tolerance the model to reduce the number of triangles. This can help smooth out noise in the data, and reduce unnecessary triangle density.

Note: You can also smooth triangle models using the Interactive Triangle Editing tool , available from the Triangle Modelling toolbar, which is displayed when you click on the button on the Main toolbar. Full details on how to use this tool are available in the on-line help.

5. Find out how many triangles there are currently in the model. Click on the to the left of the model name, bottle, in the CopyCAD Explorer, then click on the to the left of the Triangles icon.
   
   
6. Click on the Model Editing button on the Main toolbar to display its side toolbar.
   
   
7. Click on the Tolerance Model button, .
   
   
8. Click on the Triangles option in the Tolerance area.
   
   
9. Leave the default settings of Tolerance and 0.1 in the Reduce to area, 10 as the Maximum triangle aspect ratio, and leave the Tolerance open triangle boundary check box selected.
   
   
10. Click on the Apply button to tolerance the bottle model.
    
    
11. When the tolerancing is complete, click on the Accept button and examine the new model, tol_bottle. You will see that the letters have been partially smoothed and that there are far fewer triangles in the model.
    
    
12. Look at the details in the CopyCAD Explorer and you will see that the number of triangles in the tol_bottle model has been reduced to about a fifth of the original number.

See also:

Tutorials - Overview

Tolerance Model