Contours Menu

The Contours menu contains functions that detect high-curvature constructs on the object in preparation for creating a patch layout.

Immediately after clicking the Shape Phase icon (or Edit > Phase > Shape Phase), the Contours, Patches, Grids, and NURBS menus appear (in place of the Polygons, Boundaries, and Curves menus).

• Auto Surface - is a wizard that automatically generates con­tour lines, panels, patches, and grids, and creates a NURBS surface (a combination of the most common functions on the Contours Menu, Patches Menu, Grids Menu, and NURBS Menu).

• Detect Contours - is the automatic selection of curvature bands, manual adjustment of curvature bands, and the placement of yel­low (extendable) or orange (unextendable) contour lines within those curvature bands. Extendable contour lines yield “contour patches”.

• Edit Contours - allows the addition, removal, and repositioning of contour lines.

• Detect Curvature - is the automatic placement of contour lines on areas of curvature: a) orange lines that are the precursors of panel demarcation lines, and b) black contour lines that can be promoted to orange.

• Shuffle Curvature Lines - is the rearrangement of black or orange curvature lines that were generated by Contours > Detect Curva­ture, or the conversion of a black place-holder line into an orange panel-demarcation line.

• Set Curvature Level - changes the sensitivity of the algorithm that generates orange panel-demarcation lines, without re-running the Detect Curvature function.

• Relax Contours - relaxes an individual yellow or orange contour line by pulling it toward areas of higher curvature.

• Relax All Contours - (selectable only in a workflow after Contours > Detect Curvature and Patches > Construct Patches) automatically performs Contours > Relax Contours on every orange contour line on the Shape object.

• Fit Contours - decreases the number of control points and adjusts the tension on any orange or yellow contour line, or orange panel-demarcation line, to change its curvature.

• Resample Contours - (selectable after Contours > Detect Con­tours) increases or decreases the number of control points on a Contour line (yellow or orange).

• Subdivide / Extend Contours - (selectable after Contours > Detect Contours) is the creation and modification of contour patches around all yellow (extendable) contour lines, but not around orange (unextendable) contour lines.

• Promote / Constrain - converts black place-holder lines or black patch lines to orange panel-demarcation lines, and vice-versa, and fixes points and lines on the surface so that they are unaffected by other functions, and vice-versa.

• Demote All (Lines, Points, or both) - is a set of functions that demote all lines and/or points without using the Global controls in the Patches > Promote / Constrain function.

• Unconstrain All (Lines, Points, or both) - unconstrains all Lines, Points, or both.

• Convert to Patches - converts every closed loop of orange con­tour lines or red boundary lines into orange panel demarcation lines, and inserts a single four-sided patch into each panel.

• Remove - is a set of functions that remove things from the active Shape object, usually so you can start over.