Direction

The basic ways of defining a direction are:

• Direction attribute plus optional WRT. For example: HDIR OF /PIPE1 WRT /*.

• Cartesian direction. For example: N 45 W.

• Cartesian direction WRT to an element.

• All Cartesian directions are returned in the axis of the owner of the current element. For example: (U WRT CE ). This will return the Z axis of the current element relative to its owner.

• Q ( Z WRT /SCTN ). This will return the Z axis direction of /SCTN relative to the owner of the current element. For example, if the result is required in world coordinates the current element must be the World or a Site.

• FROM pos2 TO pos2. For example: FROM N 50 WRT CE TO N 100.

• Keyword AXES followed by a ppoint or pline.

• The CLOSEST keyword, which will find the closest element in a particular direction. The syntax is:

  >- CLOSEST type -+- WITH exp -.

                   |            |

                   ‘------------+- DIRECTION dir -+- EXTENT val -.

                                                  |              |

                                                  ‘--------------+-->-+- AFTER val -.

                        |             |

                        ‘-------------+- FROM ?-.

                                      |         |

                                      ‘---------+-->

In the above graph, the keywords are:

• EXTENT, which is how far to search in the direction specified, default 10M.

• AFTER, or the distance along vector after which to start search, default 0M.

• FROM, which specifies an alternative start point other than current element. This is of particular use for a branch where you might want to specify the HPOS or TPOS.

• Examples are:

  CLOSEST DIR E

  CLOSEST BOX WITH ( PURP EQ ’FLOO’ ) DIR D WRT /* EXTENT 20M

  CLOSEST VALVE DIR N 45 U FROM E100 N200 U300

  CLOSEST BRAN HANG AFTER 2M