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Physical Properties
ACIS provides means to analyze various physical properties of objects. These properties include for example, area, volume, center of gravity. Some of these physical properties are collectively referred to as mass properties.
Mass Properties
ACIS supplies routines that an application uses to find the mass properties attributable to a face or a body. Mass properties include:
- Volume
- Moments of inertia
- Center of gravity
A selector is set to determine which properties to calculate: all properties, volume and center of gravity, or volume only. A relative accuracy value may also be specified. The default tolerance is 1 (that is, 1%).
The mass property attributable to a face when it is projected on to the given projection plane may also be found. This might be used, in conjunction with the bulletin board, to compute the change in mass property of a body following some change to the body that affects just a few faces. The change in mass property for each affected face between its "before" state and "after" state is found, and the sum of the changes is used to correct the stored mass property for the body. To be meaningful, the original mass property and all incremental values for faces must be found by projecting onto the same plane.
The mass properties for cellular topology 3D cells can also be calculated.
Refer to the function reference templates for api_body_mass_pr and api_ct_cell_mass_pr for more information.
Other Properties
Other physical properties that may be determined about ACIS objects include:
- Area of a face
- Center of area of a face
- Length of a wire
- Area of a wire
- Area of a cell
Refer to reference templates for information about the specific functions that are available for this type of analysis.
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