Edit a Surface by Trimming Edge Triangles
Clean-up the edges of surfaces in your project so that you can accurately calculate volumes when comparing surfaces.
Note: Before trimming the triangles at a surface's edge, adjust the Maximum edge length and the Maximum edge angle of the surface in the Properties pane. Setting these can reduce the amount of trimming needed on the surface edge. In general, trim the edge triangles of a surface after you have made all other surface edits.
Warning: If the program is forced to recompute the edge of a surface, then all edge trimming edits will be lost.
Things that would cause this are:
- Changing the Maximum edge length of the surface in the Properties pane.
- Changing the Maximum edge angle of the surface in the Properties pane.
- Adding a new surface member outside of the edge of the surface.
- Removing surface members that lie on the edge of the surface.
Prerequisites:
- Surface
To trim a triangle:
- Do one of the following:
- Select Trim Surface Edge in Surfaces > Create.
- Right-click the surface in a graphic view, or the Project Explorer and select Trim Surface Edge from the context menu.
The Trim Surface Edge command pane displays.
- Select a surface to trim in the Surface to Trim list.
- In a graphic view, pick a point to start the trim line or right click for options, or type a coordinate in the Outside location box.
- In the view, pick a point to end the trim line or right click for options, or type a coordinate in the Inside location box.
- Click to keep trimming, or . Any triangle edges occurring outside of the outermost breakline are trimmed, removing the related triangle from the surface.
Tip: Trimming stops when a breakline on the surface is encountered. To trim deeper into the surface, remove the breakline using the Edit Surface command. Conversely, you can add breaklines to a surface to prevent trimming an edge beyond a certain point.
Note: Trimming maintains a valid surface based on the members used to form the surface. Because any point on the surface will always be connected to a triangle, the order in which you trim edge triangles can result in different formations. If you find that you cannot trim a certain triangle, you may need to remove the member on which it is based.
Warning: If you add objects on or beyond the outer edge of a surface, the surface is recalculated and all prior edge trimming is lost. Similarly, if you remove objects from a surface edge, all prior trimming is lost.
