Graphical Representation of Shell Plates

The graphical representation of shell plates can be selected to be based either on the strips used when developing the plate or to be based directly on the referenced surface and the involved seams bounding the plate. The first representation is the default of the system and it generates a faceted primitive. The later representation generates a solid primitive with a higher degree of accuracy and the ability to display holes when presenting in 3D graphics. This representation is selected by setting the variable SBH_ENABLE_SOLID_PLATES to YES.

The actual generating of shell plates takes slightly longer time when using the solid representation. All other operations on plates are on the same performance level independently of type of representation.

The solid representation, with its higher degree of accuracy, is suitable if shell plates are exported to mechanical software packages or when shell plate compensation is requested.