Repair Surfaces

Use the Surface tool to find, review, and fix any geometric errors in the model's surfaces.

The Surface tool only works on visible surfaces.
  1. From the Geometry ribbon, click the Surface tool.


    Figure 1.
    A legend displays detailing the types of checks performed and the error count for each.
  2. Optional: Hover over a check and toggle the On/Off button to enable or disable it.
    Checks that are turned off will not be updated.
    Note: When validating the model, any checks that are turned off will be turned back on. All checks must be cleared before meshing and computing a solution.
  3. If a check is producing an error, click that check in the legend.
    A guide bar used to review and fix the errors displays.
    Tip: Right-click on a check in the legend to show/hide/isolate the surfaces producing the errors.
  4. On the guide bar, navigate through and review each error using the arrows.
  5. Optional: Turn off the Auto refresh checks option.
    As errors are fixed, the legend is automatically updated to reflect the changes. However, for larger models it can be useful to avoid updating checks for each fix/modification. If this option is turned off, you have to click on the guide bar to manually refresh the legend.
  6. Define any additional options then fix the errors in the following ways:
    • Click on highlighted errors in the modeling window to fix them one-by-one.
    • Click the button on the far right of the guide bar to fix all errors at once.
Note: If any error checks can not be fixed using the options provided in the Surface repair tool, isolate them and fix them using Edit tool group.

Closed Shells

Shows the surfaces which are closed but do not form solids. You can construct solids out of these surfaces.

Click on the guide bar to toggle options for detecting baffles and considering solid surfaces.

Toggle options for detecting baffles and considering solid surfaces.

Free Edges

Shows free edges in the displayed surfaces.

Use the drop-down menu on the guide bar to select a method for fixing them.
  • If the free edges form a loop, use the Patch Hole option to fix them.
  • If two edges are close by, the Stitch option to connect them within a given tolerance.

    You also have the option to only stitch open loops.

  • If surface are floating, use the Delete option to remove those surfaces.

Non-Manifold Edges

Shows non-manifold edges (edges where more than two surfaces are connected) in the displayed surfaces. You can fix them in this tool by deleting the surfaces attached to non-manifold edges.

Note:
  • Edges attached to baffles and interface surfaces are not considered here.
  • If you do not want to delete the surfaces, you can isolate them and fix them using the Stitch Surfaces tool in the Edit tool group by collapsing points of non-manifold edges.

Self Intersections

Shows surfaces which have intersections within the surface or belong to one solid. You can fix them in this tool by:

  • Optimizing CAD with or without re-faceting
  • Performing batch repair
  • Splitting surfaces
  • Deleting surfaces. Afterwards, you are left with free edges, which you can repair using the Free edges check.
Note: For FE Topology/tessellated models, deleting surfaces is the only supported option.

For complicated models, removing self-intersections and recreating the surfaces is not easy. With these new features, you can clean up using geometric or fix tolerance and ease the cleaning process.

Note: You can isolate these surface and manually trim the regions with self-intersections using the Split tools.

Sliver Surfaces

Shows surfaces which have regions that are narrower than a defined threshold.

To define the threshold value, click on the guide bar. The default tolerance is based on the geometric tolerance defined in the Preferences dialog. You can reduce the value in this tool if you wish to retain some valid sliver surfaces.

You can fix slivers by collapsing the edges or suppressing the edges. If Suppress Only is turned on, it will provide you the option to suppress individual edges of sliver surfaces. If you click Fix All, it will suppress all sliver surface edges which are below a 60 degree angle. The rest of the edges you need to manually suppress.

For CAD geometry, you can also perform batch repair to auto-suppress edges based on given tolerance.