Merge and Imprint Tool

The Merge/Imprint tool lets you imprint sets of faces and edges onto each other. After imprinting, you can switch to the review mode to identify critical issues that may exist in the contact definition.

The tool operates in three modes:
  • interactive, where you specifically choose the faces or edges for imprinting
  • automated, where you select the parts and rely on the tool to find overlapping surfaces
  • review, where you analyze part contact efficacy using a range of metrics

The tool also lets you merge two or more overlapping (co-planar) surfaces or sets of faces. When using Merge/Imprint on a single part, the result is either a common shared surface or no surface at all (that is, the common area is removed). If there are multiple parts, the tool creates part contacts for the shared surface.

Similarly, for part curves belonging to the same parts, the tool can imprint two or more edges onto each other, effectively zipping them together. You can also imprint edges onto faces and imprint faces onto edges, depending on the requirement. In all instances, the faces or edges do not need to belong to a closed surface in order to use the tool.

As the tool only operates on triangle faces, any quad faces in the input sets are decomposed to triangles.

To display the Merge/Imprint Options, click (Merge/Imprint single or multiple parts).

Selecting Merge/Imprint from the Mode menu provides access to the Merge/Imprint Tool group box.

For the Imprint Mode, you choose three options:
  • Interactive— allows you to manually add the required faces and edges to the Source and Destination groups before performing a single part or multi-part imprint operation. For more information, see Interactive Imprint Mode.
  • Automated— uses the close part browser tool to find the relevant pairs before performing multi-part imprinting. For more information, see Automated Imprint Mode.
  • Review— provides a combination of query based metrics, table based results, and visualization options by which you can analyze either all or a selection of part contacts at one time. For more information, see Reviewing Part Contacts.

The details below are relevant to both situations. Review this information before using the tool for a specific example.

Merging and Imprinting Surfaces

For interactive imprinting, you add the required surfaces to Source and Destination groups, so that the projection scheme used for merging and imprinting knows the direction in which to travel. For automatic imprinting, the part browser tool calculates the source and destination pairs automatically.

Note If there are no vertices within the imprint tolerance that can project from one surface to the other, the imprint fails. To overcome this limitation, you can add vertices to the surface with the remesh or split faces tools.

In general, two scenarios exist when the merging and imprinting of overlapping surfaces is required:

  • The perimeter or area of the overlap is the same
  • The perimeter or area of the overlap is different
The following diagram illustrates an example where the overlapping boundaries have the same perimeter or area:

For cases where the two surfaces have a different perimeter or area, it is possible to select either surface as the source. The following diagram illustrates an example where the smaller surface is the source.

Imprinting Edges to Faces

When imprinting edges onto faces for single parts, you use the same approach as described above. In this instance, the edges are typically the source, and the destination is one or more faces that are imprinted with the shape of the edge. Details of a procedure to use with the Automated Imprint mode are given in Imprinting Baffle Edges onto Faces.

A typical example of imprinting edges onto a surface is a baffle surface perpendicular to an exterior surface. You can imprint one or more edges along the side of the baffle to the exterior surface, thus letting you convert the baffle to an interface for meshing purposes.

Example of Merging and Imprinting

The following example merges and imprints two closed surfaces together. Shown below are two closed bodies that are touching, but not merged.

As shown below, the result of the Merge/Imprint was to retriangulate both bodies, so that there is a one to one correspondence at the interface.

If both bodies belong to the same part, the tool provides the choice of keeping or deleting the shared surface. If both bodies belong to two different parts, the tool creates a part contact between the two surfaces.

Considerations When Using the Merge/Imprint Tool

The following conditions apply when using the Merge/Imprint tool for both single and multiple parts:

  • The surfaces do not need to be unique to the overlapping area. For example, a closed body, consisting of one surface, can merge with the overlapping surface of another body.
  • When merging faces with other faces, the tool does not generate part curves. If part curves are required, you create them manually.
  • The surface faces and edges for single parts do not need to belong to a closed and manifold part. In other words, the tool allows use of planar and open surfaces.
  • The quality of the original surface tessellation is not critical.
  • You can use the surface remesher after merging to improve the quality of the resultant surface.