Tutorials PartCraft help Walkthroughs
Zebra stripes and curvature
Check how smoothly the faces of any part join, with zebra stripes that follow the view or a colour map of mean curvature, from the Views menu.
Written for PartCraft 0.4. The same help is inside the app: press F1.
Two quick looks at how smooth a part's faces are, on any part in the Design workspace (the Form workspace has its own, for the form you are editing: see Freeform shapes with Form).
Zebra stripes
Open Views and choose Zebra stripes. The part shows the reflection of a striped light, as a polished surface would:
- Where two faces join tangentially (a fillet on a flat, a smooth Gordon surface), the stripes run on across the join with a bend.
- Where they meet at a crease, the stripes break and jump.
- Where the curvature also matches (G2), the stripes flow on without even a kink.
Turn the view (drag, or a view-cube face): the stripes are drawn again from the new direction. Stripes sets how many there are.
Curvature
Choose Curvature in the same menu. The part is coloured by its mean curvature: blue where it is hollow (concave), pale where it is flat, red where it bulges (convex). The card says at what curvature the colours reach full strength, in 1/mm and as a radius. Sharp edges count as very curved, so they show strongly; look at the faces between them.
The card
Both open the analysis card at the bottom left of the view, which also holds the draft analysis. Switch between them with Show. Choosing the open one again in Views, Close or EscEsc turns it off. The colours follow the part as you change it; nothing is saved in the part.