How does 3D ACIS® Modeler work? 5 ways to play 3D modeling

3D ACIS® Modeler (ACIS) is Spatial’s prestigious 3D modeling engine. ACIS is an object-oriented open C++ architecture with powerful 3D modeling capabilities. It also integrates wireframe, surface and solid modeling functions, supports manifold and non-manifold topologies, and has a very rich set of geometric operations, so it is very suitable for building 3D applications with mixed modeling functions.

To use this 3D modeling engine, you need to know the 5 basic features of 3D ACIS® Modeler. Include: Create 3D model, Modify 3D model, Query 3D model, Manage 3D model, and Verify and repair 3D model.

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Function one — Create 3d models

Most applications enabled by 3D ACIS Modeler create 3D models. Among them, sketching is the process used to create collections of curves, circles, ellipses, lines and. Sketch simply connects points, user input points, and tangents, and then applies constraints on a two-dimensional grid. Curves can be extruded, rotated, swept or peeled to create surfaces. The surface can be trimmed and stitched to create solids. The construction of the original solid follows certain C parameters. This may include solids such as spheres, toris, cuboids, etc.

Finally, the overlap of simple entities can be combined with Boolean operations such as union and minus to form complex three-dimensional models. In 3D ACIS Modeler, 3D models can also be non-manifold and can combine solid, double-panel bodies and wires.

While these are standard features for geometry kernels, creating stable, fast, and advanced apis for geometry kernels is not an easy task. One is spatial training, for new 3D ACIS Modeler developers who are writing a function to create a solid tetrahedron using low-level interfaces.

Function 2 – modify the 3D model

Modifying 3d models has become increasingly important in recent years. The ability to modify 3D models beyond the original design intent is especially important because models come from many different sources, and design intent is often not available in explicit feature trees. Model modification is also one of the motivations for high-quality 3D models.

The goal of design is to create an ideal, the practice of design is to make a prototype, evaluate its characteristics, modify and repeat. Design is iterative. While modifying a 3D computer model is not easy, it is much easier than modifying a 3D physical model.

In addition to design, there are other important workflows that require 3D model modification:

• Create tool models from part models
• Preparation of a physics-based simulation model
• Customization, for example, shoe size changes
• Extract: Remove part of a model for analysis or IP hiding

One of the standard tools for model modification is Boolean operations such as union and subtraction. Non-regular Boolean operations are critical to unify CAD assemblies used to create analog grids.

Related to Boolean operations are projection and winding functions. These are useful for model customization such as molding. Blending and chamfering are two standard tools for modeling industrial parts. Warping is a generic way to apply 3-D — 3-D mapping to 3-d Models. Industrial operations using warping include bending, stretching, twisting, and springback.

Local operations are collections of operators used to modify regions or features on a THREE-DIMENSIONAL model. Useful applications for these operations include:

• Edit directly (move face or remove face)
• Tool making (fining)
• Fabrication (offset surface and thickened sheet)
• Model healing (tuning surfaces, replacing geometry and filling gaps)

Function three – query 3d model

The viewer is probably the most basic 3D application. Because of the amazing computational power of our visual cortex, the viewer application conveys a great deal of information about the 3D model by simulating rotation, scaling, and panning. At the heart of this simulation is the geometric kernel evaluator, which can create coordinate and surface derivative (normal) data at any resolution. The viewer application must convert the 3D model to polygons. This is done by an interface called Faceter. Faceter needs to ask a lot more questions than computations — traversing topologies, matching surface data across boundaries, boxes in parameter Spaces, and so on.

In addition to the viewer function, Faceter must also generate polygonal meshes for seeding external grid applications for physical base simulation. In general, mesher has more stringent requirements than viewer, which is why Faceter has a different interface.

The faceting-related query is sampling. Sampling is an important technology in more and more applications such as coordinate measuring machines (CMM). Options include arc length sampling, curvation-based sampling, and edge off Settings.

Point distance is to calculate the distance between one or more points and a 3D model, which is also an important function in the CMM field. Point spacing should be both fast and accurate. In 3D ACIS Modeler, using multithreading can increase speed. Related queries include entity-entity distance and entity-entity conflicts, which are important features in many industries. For example, PCB design process in EDA industry, tool path design in CAM industry. Related queries are entity minimums, which are also useful in design.

Function 4 – Manage the 3D model

So far, we have mainly studied geometric and topological operators, data and their applications in different industrial applications. The process of connecting these operators to industrial-strength applications requires some infrastructure. In 3D ACIS Modeler, this infrastructure is the system framework.

Model management

Model management includes features such as modification tracking. For small model changes, applications should limit updates to a small portion of the visual scene diagram.

In most applications, Undo/redo is standard, making it possible to combine modeling operations into atomic transactions. Any application that creates or modifies a 3D model needs to be saved and restored. And saving and restoring must be simple and fast. The basic operations include scanning, traversing all the topological and geometric structures that make up the 3D model, base saving and recovery, and copying.

attribute

Properties are 3D ACIS Modeler mechanism entities used to attach user data to 3D models. Properties come with rules that describe their behavior under basic operations such as split, merge, and copy.

Memory management

A good memory management system can capture statistics, audit for leaks, and provide other debugging information.

The bug report

The mature geometry kernel is exception safe and has a mechanism for returning error diagnostics that uses input to localize the problem and indicate the root cause of the exception.

bridge

3D ACIS Modeler provides a source code bridge to HOOPS visualization systems and VKI Mesher. These can provide a customizable starting point for adding visualization or gridding capabilities to your application.

interoperability

An application that supports both 3D interoperability and 3D ACIS Modeler can read 3D models from the most popular formats, making the data available to every 3D ACIS Modeler operator.

multithreading

3D ACIS Modeler is thread-safe. It has a growing list of multithreading apis and provides support for multithreading at the application level.

Function 5 – Verify and repair 3d models

Not all 3D models are created equal. Visualization provides a lot of information about 3D models, but small, nearly invisible defects can slow down or even fail downstream modeling or query operations.

3D ACIS Modeler provides a checker that checks for serious geometric and topological defects in 3D models, as well as the option to check for less serious problems.

The solid model has different requirements for geometric gaps between topological entities such as edges, vertices and surfaces. The 3D ACIS Modeler Fi Les, written by 3D InterOp, can model these gaps correctly, but other translators may not. 3D ACIS Modeler provides a remedy for these errors by “tolerating” edges and vertices by marking measured gaps and caching gap data into an operation such as Boolean Union or Subtract to create a solid model. The 3D ACIS Modeler also provides the ability to tighten gaps in some cases.

IGES format data is usually a “face packet” that must be stitched together to create a valid entity model. This is achieved by using the splicing feature in 3D ACIS Modeler, which automatically interprets gaps. 3D ACIS Modeler also provides other fixes such as strip entity deletion, which removes very small topological entities. Sliver entities do not add information to the design, and they can make complex geometric operations such as Boolean unions or subtraction fail.