Assessing the Initial Wrap

Review the initial wrap to identify any unexpected holes or deformed surfaces. You then re-wrap the geometry using the parallel gap closure to improve the wrap around the camera.

To view the mesh of the wrapped geometry:
  1. Right-click the Scenes node and select New > Mesh.
    The Mesh Scene 1 display appears in the Graphics window.
  2. Rename the Mesh Scene 1 node to Drone Wrap.
  3. To omit part edges from the scene, create a filter that selects only part surfaces:
    1. In the Scene/Plot tab, select the Mesh 1 node and deactivate Mesh.
    2. Select the Mesh 1 > Parts node and, in the properties window, click (Query Editor).
    3. In the Filter window, select Objects (Static) from the drop-down list.
    4. In the middle drop-down list, leave the setting as default, are.
    5. Next to the third box, click (Custom Editor) and select the following:
      1. Surface Wrapper > Lower and select:
        • Arm
        • Camera
        • Faces
        • Legs
        • Lens
        • SixDOFArm
      2. Surface Wrapper > Upper and select:
        • Dome
        • Faces
    6. Click OK and (Commit Changes).
    7. To add another predicate, click (Add a new item).
    8. Set this predicate to Type is Part Surface and click (Commit Changes).
    9. Click OK.
  4. To view the surfaces generated by the gap closure tool, create a separate geometry displayer:
    1. Right-click the Drone Wrap node and select New Displayer > Surface.
    2. Rename Surface 1 to Mesh Gap Closure.
    3. Set Color Mode to Constant.
    4. Under the Mesh Gap Closure node, set Parts to Surface Wrapper > Surfaces > Gap Closure Faces and click OK.
    5. Set Color to Maroon.
    The following screenshot shows the holes that were filled by the gap closure in the drone.

  5. To link both scenes, under the Scenes node, multi-select the Drone Geometry and Drone Wrap nodes, right-click one of them, and activate Linked View.
    This option synchronizes both views to use the same orientation, position, and zoom level which is useful when comparing scenes side-by-side.
  6. In the graphics window, click and drag the Drone Geometry scene to the left-hand side of the graphics window until an orange border appears—then release the scene.
    The two scenes appears side-by-side in the graphics window.

    The surface wrapper filled most of the slots in the drone as the surface size specification was large enough to fill the holes. The gap closure option was activated to fill the remaining holes in the drone.

    If you zoom closely to the camera of the drone, you can see that the wrap is connecting the camera to the lower surface of the drone.

    The legacy wrapper produces a poor quality wrap, especially around the camera. The legacy wrapper fails to capture the underlying geometry, attempting to close the gap between the main body of the drone and the camera.

As the behavior of the parallel wrapper is different to the legacy wrapper, you can activate the parallel wrapper to obtain a different result for the same wrapper settings.
  1. To execute the wrapper using parallel gap closure:
    1. Select the Operations > SurfaceWrapper node and set the following properties:
      Property Setting
      Mesher Execution Mode Parallel
      Legacy Wrapper Deactivated
    2. Right-click the Surface Wrapper node and select Execute.


      The parallel wrapper for this case has improved the gap closure result. The gap closure operation is no longer attempting to close the gap between the main body of the drone and the camera.

      Both the legacy and parallel wrapper attempt to close the gap at the smallest opening. However, the parallel wrapper uses additional wall distance information to help identify the locations of the smallest opening with greater accuracy, leading to an improved wrap for this case.