Automated Imprint Mode

The automated imprint mode differs from the interactive mode in that the tool calculates source and destination pairs automatically. These calculated pairs appear in the Part Browser.

The following image shows the Merge/Imprint tool in Automated imprint mode.

  1. To use the Merge/Imprint tool in Automated Imprint mode, first review and set the Tolerance value and any advanced parameters that you require.
    To access and edit advanced parameters, activate Show Advanced Parameters. These values affect how the tool finds pairs. For more details, see Advanced Parameters for Multi-Part Imprinting.
  2. For the browse operation, you can either use all the active repair parts or specify an inputs parts directly.
    1. If you want to browse all the active repair parts, select the Use all Parts option.
    2. If you want to browse specific parts, select the Specify input parts option and proceed to select two or more parts.
  3. Click Find Pairs.
    All relevant part pairs that are based on the supplied values are found.
    1. If you enter an unsuitable Tolerance value resulting in an excessively long search, click Stop to stop the process and enter a new Tolerance value.
    2. If the tool does not find all pairs, then change the Merge Angle (activate Show Advanced Parameters) or Tolerance, and click Find Pairs again to repeat the process.
Once Find Pairs is complete, the Output window shows a summary of all pairs that are found on a per-part basis. The Output window displays the text MERGED next to a previously merged pair. You can merge and imprint pairs of parts more than once by selecting source and destination faces manually, but the automatic find does not return previously merged pairs of parts

If multiple pairs are present, the Browse Pairs selector becomes active, allowing you to display each part pair. Clicking the forward or backward arrows cycles through each pair and displays them in the Graphics window.

The Show Neighbor Parts option displays or hides neighboring parts in the scene once part pairs are found. See Displaying Neighboring Parts.

Each part pair appears green and red in the Graphics window, to indicate the source and destination surface respectively. Previously imprinted pairs remain in the browser, but are inactive (that is, they do not appear green or red) for the current Surface Preparation session.

The Destination and Source drop-down menus become available in the Part Browser after the search process is complete. The first drop-down menu is the Destination menu which contains all parts that form a pair with other parts. The second drop-down menu is the Source menu which contains all parts that form a pair with the selected Destination part.

  1. If you wish to reverse the source and destination, click to swap them.
    You can also use the Priority Indexing button to define which part is the source and which part is the destination by comparing the Priority Index between the part pair. This option is useful for simulations with many parts.
  2. To remove pairs from the Part Browser, use the menus to select the appropriate part pair, and click to remove them for the current Surface Preparation session.
  3. When you have identified all part pairs, click Imprint All to imprint all part pairs at once. Alternatively, click Imprint Pair to imprint the part pair that is selected as the Destination and Source in the Part Browser.
    When the default advanced parameters are maintained, the tool generates a new part contact with a conformal mesh for each imprinted part, which represents the common surface between the two parts. You can review the new surfaces in the simulation tab.

After setting up the imprint behavior and finding pairs, you can create an imprint operation in the mesh pipeline for the currently selected pair.
  1. To create an imprint operation for the current pair, click Create Operation.
    The surface repair tool creates an imprint operation under the Operations node. The newly created imprint node is defined with a snapshot of the settings that you defined in the surface repair tool.

    Control options such as Reimprint Existing Contacts and Remesh After Imprint are not exposed in surface repair and are therefore set to default states for the newly created imprint operation. You can make changes to these options in the tree. All other options are carried directly from surface repair to the operation, including the units used for the Tolerance and Merge Angle.

    By default, if the Priority Indexing table does not contain any entries then there are no part priority sets in the Repair Imprint operation. A part priority set is created if one or both of the input parts for the current pair are also set in the Priority Indexing table. The following rules apply:
    • If only one part has an entry in the Priority Indexing table, the operation has a single part priority set that contains the part.
    • If both parts are defined in the Priority Indexing table and they both have the same Priority Indexing value (for example 2), then a single part priority set is created containing both parts.
    • If both parts are defined in the table and they have different Priority values (for example 1 and 3) then two part priority sets are created, with the lower priority value (1) part being in the first (highest priority) set and the higher priority value (3) part being in the second (lowest priority) set.
    NoteSince there are only two parts involved in a part browser imprint, the exact priority index value specified in the priority set is not relevant. The only consideration is that the higher priority part is first and the lowest priority is second in order to ensure the correct imprint order (source part imprints onto destination part).