[cwl]

Hi everyone!

I have a question that might be lame or sound silly, but ...

Imagine we have (solid) parts (pipes, blades, tubes, shrouds .. whatever) that are used for extraction of the flow volume, and that volume is meshed afterwards and simulation run on that mesh. Good.

We surely can plot simulation results as anything anywhere inside the volume, but showing the (solid) parts makes it more representative.
Yet showing them might block (or cover) all the simulation results displayers.

One way - is to make (solid) parts transparent, but that does not always look good.

Another way - is to display them sliced, like in the attached image (stolen from the internet).

CAD Slice Sections.jpg

But:
- Displayer (surface) of a plane section (with Parts property set to solid parts) would show only contours of the intersection of the plane with surfaces of the part as the part does not have a volume mesh representation;
- Clip Planes .. just clip, they do not show (fill) the clip section (as it does in 3D-CAD tool);

So I wonder - how can a section of a Part be shown filled in a Scene?

PS The only dumb solution I can imagine is to mesh solid parts too .. but that is insane.

[JBeilke]

Just duplicate the solid and cut it at this section.

[cwl]

Originally Posted by JBeilke

Just duplicate the solid and cut it at this section.

Thank you for your idea, I also had it in mind - but that is hardly an elegant solution.

Also - CAD model might be unavailable, so that would require subtract at the parts operation level .. too complicated for a simple thing.

I was hoping for a simple trick that I was missing.

[JBeilke]

You can load the geometry into the cad-module and simply cut it there. Nothing is easier than that.

[cwl]

Originally Posted by JBeilke

You can load the geometry into the cad-module and simply cut it there. Nothing is easier than that.

Not that easy.

One might not have a solid body CAD model and thus geometry would be imported via Import Surface Mesh.
Which again can be done by subtracting some block at the parts operation level, - but that is a way too complicated solution for such a simple issue.

In general - that is a routine hand work, especially in case of running multiple simulations using Replace Part operation, and it should be done automatically.

[JBeilke]

You can write a little macro for this.

[LuckyTran]

Originally Posted by cwl

- Displayer (surface) of a plane section (with Parts property set to solid parts) would show only contours of the intersection of the plane with surfaces of the part as the part does not have a volume mesh representation;

That is true for an outline. Create a surface displayer and enable filled. And choose your favorite color for the filling.

[cwl]

Originally Posted by LuckyTran

That is true for an outline. Create a surface displayer and enable filled. And choose your favorite color for the filling.

That's the issue - it would display only contours even if filled is enabled (i.e. Surface is checked in Displayer properties) if part does not have a volume representation.

And that is kind of logical - since part without mesh is just a set of surfaces.

PS Setting Surface Displayer Representation to Latest Surface or Geometry expectedly does not help.