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Overview Of This Manual |
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This manual, the Parasolid Functional Description, is the main user guide for the Parasolid toolkit. It provides a comprehensive description of how you can use Parasolid and the PK interface to add 3D modelling and design capabilities to the heart of your application.
The Parasolid Functional Description is intended to be used in conjunction with the Parasolid PK Interface Programming Reference Manual, which provides a complete reference to every part of the PK interface. In the HTML version of the Parasolid documentation set, a comprehensive system of links lets you move seamlessly between the two manuals.
The material in the Functional Description is divided into a number of different volumes, each of which provides information on a different theme. Before moving onto the more detailed topics in later volumes, you are encouraged to become familiar with the material in the first three volumes. The volumes provided in the Functional Description are as follows:
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An overall introduction to Parasolid, the PK interface, and the basic concepts you need to understand in order to use Parasolid. See Chapter 1, “Introduction To Parasolid” for more information. |
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An introduction to developing an application that makes use of Parasolid’s functionality. This volume explains the overall architecture of a Parasolid-enabled application, the modules you need to supply, and discusses topics such as the design of the PK interface, tracking changes and receiving feedback during modelling operations, and calling Parasolid functionality from .NET code. See Chapter 4, “Introduction To Application Development” for more information. |
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A description of the model structure that underpins 3D models in the Parasolid space. This volume explains Parasolid’s topology and geometry, the different body types supported, and the principles of Tolerant Modelling. See Chapter 13, “Introduction To Basic Concepts In Parasolid” for more information. |
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An explanation of how to retrieve information from a Parasolid body, such as making topological and geometric enquiries, calculating mass properties information, measuring the distance between bodies and discovering whether and how they collide, and checking the validity of a model. See Chapter 25, “Introduction To Model Interrogation” for more information. |
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An introduction to some of the most fundamental ways in which topology can be manipulated, including support for deleting redundant topology, and for splitting topological entities. See Chapter 31, “Introduction To Manipulating Topology” for more information. |
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The creation of profiles underpins much of Parasolid’s modelling capabilities. This volume explains how you can create profiles and then manipulate them to create 3D shapes by extruding, sweeping, or lofting them. See Chapter 35, “Introduction To Profiling and Surfacing”” for more information. |
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A description of Parasolid’s support for working with wire and sheet models. This volume explains how to create wire and sheet bodies, how to sew sheets together (for example, when importing data), and how you can use mid-surface generation techniques to create sheet bodies from existing solid bodies. See Chapter 43, “Introduction To Sheets and Wires”” for more information. |
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A description of the imprinting and boolean functionality provided by Parasolid. This volume explains how you can imprint entities onto other bodies, perform boolean unite, subtract and intersect operations between two or more bodies, create patterns, section bodies, and examine how bodies intersect each other. See Chapter 49, “Introduction To Imprinting and Booleans” for more information. |
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Offsetting operations are essential tools when editing models, and they are also at the heart of Parasolid’s functionality for hollowing solid bodies or thickening sheet bodies. This volume describes Parasolid’s support for all these operations. See Chapter 57, “Introduction To Offsetting Operations” for more information. |
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Parasolid provides a vast range of tools that you can use to perform edits on existing models. This volume explains editing operations as diverse as filling holes, tapering faces, and deleting entities. It also describes Parasolid’s powerful generic face editing functionality, which lets you perform a wide range of different operations in a single function call, while automatically preserving the design integrity of your model. See Chapter 61, “Introduction To Model Editing”” for more information. |
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The ability to add blends (sometimes known as rounds or fillets) to your models is fundamental to 3D design. This volume describes Parasolid’s comprehensive support for adding blends to edges and between faces. See Chapter 73, “Introduction To Blending”” for more information. |
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A description of the Convergent Modeling™ technology functionality provided by Parasolid. This volume explains what Convergent Modeling is and how you can use this functionality. It also describes the Parasolid topological operations that support it. See Chapter 81, “Introduction To Convergent Modeling”” for more information. |
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Exchanging 3D data between different Parasolid-enabled systems is trivial, since they are all based on the same Parasolid XT file format. However, Parasolid also provides extensive support for importing data from and exporting data to systems that do not have Parasolid at their core. This volume explains how you can exchange data with such systems. See Chapter 89, “Introduction To Importing And Exporting”” for more information. |
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As well as providing 3D modelling operations, Parasolid provides extensive functionality that you can harness at the application level. For example, you can use attributes to record arbitrary information that might be relevant to your application; partitions and rollback allow you to manage 3D models in your application and implement a powerful history mechanism. This volume describes the application-level support Parasolid offers to the developer. See Chapter 92, “Introduction To Application Support” for more information. |
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Ultimately, much of the digital design process relies on being able to display your 3D data. Parasolid supports the ability to render images on a display device in any combination of wire-frame, hidden-line and faceted views. In addition, Parasolid provides functionality to let you select entities from a displayed image using, for example, a mouse pointer or a touch screen device. This volume describes the graphics support that Parasolid provides. See Chapter 102, “Introduction To Graphic Support”for more information. |
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This volume describes the support that Parasolid provides to manage the run-time session with Parasolid, including the ability to call Parasolid from multiple threads and the ability to take advantage of multiple processors. See Chapter 110, “Introduction To Session Support” for more information. |
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Parasolid provides extensive support to let you handle errors of all types within your application. This volume explains how you can use this support to implement a robust error handling system in your application. See Chapter 119, “Introduction To Error Handling” for more information. |
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The final volume in the Functional Description consists of a number of appendices that provide specific detailed information relating to content elsewhere in the manual. See Appendix A, “System Attribute Definitions”, Appendix B, “The Mathematical Form Of B-Geometry”, Appendix C, “How the C# Binding is Implemented” or Appendix D, “Persistent Mesh (PSM) Format” for more information. |
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