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Introduction |
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Welcome to the Overview of Parasolid. This manual provides a detailed overview of the powerful and versatile 3D modelling functionality that the Parasolid component software library brings to your application. This manual gives a broad, high-level overview of Parasolid functionality. Not all areas are covered, and more detailed information is provided in the full Parasolid documentation set.
The Overview of Parasolid is intended for anyone evaluating, or thinking of evaluating, the Parasolid kernel modelling library. The information it contains is useful to senior managers, product planners, system architects and developers alike.
This manual does not contain any specific details about the Parasolid API - the functional interface between your application code and Parasolid. Material on integrating Parasolid with your application and learning the Parasolid API is available on the Parasolid Jumpstart Kit: see Section 2.3 for details.
The Overview of Parasolid is divided into the following chapters.
Chapter 2, “About Parasolid”, gives a brief summary of the various functional areas covered by the Parasolid library, and tells you about the various components that comprise the Parasolid product. This chapter includes a comprehensive overview of the teaching and reference material available for learning how to incorporate Parasolid into your application and start using it.
Chapter 3, “Model Structure”, explains the structure used for models created using Parasolid, as well as the different types of body that are supported.
Chapter 4, “Booleans and Related Functionality”, describes the functionality available for uniting and subtracting bodies, for finding the intersections between bodies, and for using features on a body to create instances and patterns.
Chapter 5, “Local Operations”, describes Parasolid’s local operations functionality. Local operations are modelling operations that affect just a part of a model, and include operations that change the topology of a model, such as tapering, transforming or replacing geometry, as well as hollowing and offsetting operations, and functionality to simplify parts of a model.
Chapter 6, “Working with Sheets and Wires”, explains how to model with wires and sheets, including functionality for trimming, sewing together and thickening sheets.
Chapter 7, “B-Spline Curves and Surfaces”, describes Parasolid’s functionality for curves and surfaces.
Chapter 8, “Convergent Modeling”, provides an overview on using mesh information for operations instead of classic geometry.
Chapter 9, “Building Bodies from Profiles”, explains how you can extrude, spin, sweep or loft between profiles (wire or sheet sketches) to create entirely new bodies.
Chapter 10, “Blending”, describes Parasolid’s comprehensive and unrivalled blending functionality. Parasolid can replace edges in a body with blend faces, or create new blend faces between other sets of faces.
Chapter 11, “Importing Foreign Data”, describes how you can import data from other modelling systems into Parasolid. Dedicated functionality is provided to help you successfully import such data, create Parasolid entities from it, and then model reliably in Parasolid using this new data.
Chapter 12, “Storing Data”, describes Parasolid’s functionality for storing data to and retrieving parts from external storage such as disk or databases. It explains Parasolid’s use of the XT format, and the concept of the Parasolid pipeline for straightforward data exchange between Parasolid-powered applications.
Chapter 13, “Enquiring Model Data and Identifying Details”, describes the wide range of functionality for returning information on the status of any Parasolid entity. Also discussed is Parasolid’s support for model analysis functionality, via such operations as detection of clashes between bodies, the calculation of mass properties information, and closest approach information.
Chapter 14, “Displaying Data”, describes the support provided for displaying your model on screen, and for storing graphical information for later display.
Chapter 15, “Application Support”, describes the support Parasolid provides for recording information that is not directly related to modelling. This includes the ability to attach arbitrary information to entities, support for recording the history of, and moving forwards and backwards through, a modelling session.
Chapter 16, “Writing Parasolid Applications”, gives a brief overview of the steps you need to take to integrate Parasolid into your application code.
Chapter 17, “Multi-Processing Support”, describes Parasolid’s support for running on machines that includes several processors.
The Parasolid library is available on the following platforms:
Parasolid is compliant with the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (Microsoft SDL) standard. This standard is a set of rules and coding practices produced by Microsoft for use in producing software free from common security flaws, such as easily exploitable buffer overflow. For more information see Section 6.6.2, “Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (MS-SDL)”, in the Parasolid Installation Notes.
Parasolid is thread-safe on all platforms, in that it can be called from multiple threads within an application safely. In addition, many Parasolid API functions can be executed simultaneously by different application threads. The Parasolid API, described in Chapter 16, “Writing Parasolid Applications”, manages application threads to ensure safety.
A number of functional areas within Parasolid have been adapted for symmetric multi-processing (or parallel processing) via the multi-threading environments supported under Microsoft Windows, UNIX, and Linux. This can improve the performance of Parasolid when executing on multi-processor platforms. See Chapter 17, “Multi-Processing Support”, for more information.
The Parasolid product portfolio includes several toolkits that provide functionality for integrating digital design information into your application, together with the various technologies associated with those toolkits. The Parasolid library is the main topic of the current manual, but a complete list is given below.
Recognised as the world's leading, production-proven core solid modeler, Parasolid is an exact boundary-representation geometric modeler supporting solid modelling, generalized cellular modelling and integrated free-form surface/sheet modelling.
Parasolid Bodyshop is a toolkit targeted towards solving problems that typically arise during the exchange of data between different CAx applications, and improving the quality of the translated data.
Whether you already have a translator solution, or you are developing your own Parasolid translator, Parasolid Bodyshop incorporates suites of tools to assist you and helps to improve the overall success rate of your data conversion.
For more information about Parasolid Bodyshop, send an email to
ps-support.plm@siemens.com
.
Siemens Industry Software also offers a number of translator toolkits for translating between alternative solid modelling formats and the Parasolid format. These toolkits give you the capability to include native translator functionality in your applications, allowing you to read and write solid modelling data in a variety of different formats.
Parasolid Translator for STEP is a bi-directional translator between Parasolid and STEP-AP203. It can create STEP-AP203 files that represent Parasolid models and it can read STEP-AP203 files and produce Parasolid models from them. Parasolid STEP supports STEP AP203 and AP214 Class II, class III, class IV, class V entities and class VI entities and assemblies.
Parasolid Translator for IGES is a Parasolid-powered component library that offers a robust and reliable solution for bi-directional translation of geometric data between Parasolid-powered applications and other heterogeneous CAD systems through IGES files. Parasolid IGES also supports JAMA-IS version 1.04: an IGES data exchange protocol established for the Japanese automobile industry to realize smooth data interchange among dissimilar CAD/CAM systems.
Parasolid Translator for ACIS is a software toolkit that supports bi-directional translation of data between Parasolid and Spatial Technology's ACIS SAT format. The licensee must acquire the required ACIS licenses to use Parasolid ACIS.
For more information about Parasolid Translators, send an email to
ps-support.plm@siemens.com
.
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