There are many situations in which one might wish to create a body by "shrinkwrapping" around a body or bodies. Some examples include:
1. CAE preparation (wipe out tiny edges, defeature, etc)
2. Simplified representations of parts (for example, redacting for sharing of "dumb" models, modeling the real-world surface transitions in laminated composite parts; also, creating good-looking Wrapped parts)
etc etc
As far as I can tell, the main functionality in NX for something like this is the Wrap Geometry (and Wrap Assembly etc) commands. But in practice, the resulting solids have very little detail. In particular, if the geometry you're Wrapping has any "sticky-outy" things, you're going to end up with a "simplified part" that looks nothing like the real part. In this sense, Wrap Geometry really is producing something like more of a "model envelope". It's like the current Wrap Geometry is wrapping the model with very stiff paper.
What would be VERY useful is an enhanced "wrap model" feature which would have much more fidelity to the real model... Think along the lines of Wrap Geometry with cellophane, rather than the current "stiff paper"...
As a precedent, I think that some commercial CFD codes have good implementations of comparable idea. Check out Star-CCM, for instance:
Here's a quote from that page:
"The surface wrapper works by ‘shrink-wrapping’ a high quality triangulated surface mesh onto any geometrical model, closing holes in the geometry and joining disconnected and overlapping surfaces, providing a single manifold surface that can be used to automatically generate a computational mesh without user intervention."
I've seen this in action and it really does what it says. If NX had such a functionality built-in, I think it would find a large number of uses.
What do you think?
1. CAE preparation (wipe out tiny edges, defeature, etc)
2. Simplified representations of parts (for example, redacting for sharing of "dumb" models, modeling the real-world surface transitions in laminated composite parts; also, creating good-looking Wrapped parts)
etc etc
As far as I can tell, the main functionality in NX for something like this is the Wrap Geometry (and Wrap Assembly etc) commands. But in practice, the resulting solids have very little detail. In particular, if the geometry you're Wrapping has any "sticky-outy" things, you're going to end up with a "simplified part" that looks nothing like the real part. In this sense, Wrap Geometry really is producing something like more of a "model envelope". It's like the current Wrap Geometry is wrapping the model with very stiff paper.
What would be VERY useful is an enhanced "wrap model" feature which would have much more fidelity to the real model... Think along the lines of Wrap Geometry with cellophane, rather than the current "stiff paper"...
As a precedent, I think that some commercial CFD codes have good implementations of comparable idea. Check out Star-CCM, for instance:
Here's a quote from that page:
"The surface wrapper works by ‘shrink-wrapping’ a high quality triangulated surface mesh onto any geometrical model, closing holes in the geometry and joining disconnected and overlapping surfaces, providing a single manifold surface that can be used to automatically generate a computational mesh without user intervention."
I've seen this in action and it really does what it says. If NX had such a functionality built-in, I think it would find a large number of uses.
What do you think?
