Cutters

The Cutters node is collecting the cutters. The popup menu has the functions Add, Offset and Delete.

Cutters can be of four different types; Principal planes defined by a given coordinate, RSOs, shell block seams or stored panels. All picked from lists.

Once a cutter has been defined it has a popup menu containing the functions Find Panels, Apply, Offset, Divide and Delete.

The Find Panels function is used to check all the selected panels against the cutter adding them under the cutter node if intersecting.

The Apply function creates temporary seams on the found planar panels and shell seams for the curved panels from the intersection between cutter and panel. These seams can be viewed by dragging the panels into a graphical view. After applying the cutters the panels are drawn in a simplified way but with the temporary seams enhanced. Also the nodes of these panels are marked with a blue Tag symbol to indicate that the cutter has been applied to them.

Before applying the cutter the user can decide if a symmetrical panel intersected in an unsymmetrical way should keep its symmetry or be broken up in two side specific panels. It can be an advantage to keep the symmetry if for example, a cutter is defined on Y=8000 and there will also be a cutter defined at Y=-8000.

Note: A cutter node cannot be deleted as long as it contains panels with the cutter applied.

The Divide function finally cuts the panels in two. The cutter node has now no panels left while the Selected Objects node holds all the resulting panels.

It is possible to define multiple cutters, but as soon as a cutter has been applied to its panels they must be divided before starting the same steps for another cutter.

Optionally stiffener offsets can be defined via the Offset function. Offsets can be defined for all cutters on the Cutters node, or for an individual cutter, or even for an individual panel under a cutter.

The divided stiffener ends can be specified regarding shift, slant and notches. For built profile also a flange shift and flange notch can be set. The shift and slant values are given in mm and the notch from the notches found in the endcut table.

The values given in the dialog are translated to a connection code and an endcut code (optionally with parameters). The available shift values are controlled by the file connected to the environment variable SBH_CONCODES. Note that matching codes have to be defined, one with a positive and one with a negative shift (gap) value.

By default the endcut types 11, 21 and 31 are used.

If additional endcut types are needed they can be set via the default keywords PAN_SPLIT_ECUT_FLATBAR, PAN_SPLIT_ECUT_BULB_LBAR, PAN_SPLIT_ECUT_TBAR and PAN_SPLIT_ECUT_BUILT_TBAR. It could be for example,

PAN_SPLIT_ECUT_FLATBAR = 11,12

PAN_SPLIT_ECUT_BULB_LBAR = 21,22

PAN_SPLIT_ECUT_TBAR = 31,32

PAN_SPLIT_ECUT_BUILT_TBAR = 130,131,140,141