Wall Thickness: Heat Map – Help Center 3DViewStation

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Wall Thickness: Heat Map

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Toolpane Settings

This chapter describes the tool settings of the Wall Thickness function.

Setting / Button		Default value (If multiple options are available, the default is bold.)	Description
Wall thickness analysis
Presets			Presets for fast or visual qualitative computation. Default is ''User defined'' (see the ''User defined'' section for specific settings). Presets can be adjusted and added: Installation directory\Resources\presets.xml
User defined
Mode		▪Ray-based ▪Rolling ball	Ray-based: Calculates the wall thickness by firing a ray through the geometry. Rolling ball: Calculates the wall thickness by the largest possible spheres that fit into a geometry.
Use relative accuracy		true	On: The ''Relative accuracy'' is used. Off: The ''Absolute accuracy'' is used.
Relative accuracy		0.01 %	A percentage value to define the accuracy of the calculation. Smaller values improve the result but increase processing time.
Absolute accuracy		1.0	An absolute value to define the accuracy of the calculation. Smaller values improve the result but increase processing time.
	Rolling ball
	Angle tolerance	25.0	Optimizes the results of the rolling ball calculation by ignoring angles below the tolerance value that would create very small spheres.
	Validate result	true	Validates the result by using a raycast, e.g. to locate geometry that is not closed or is otherwise invalid.
Compute			Starts a wall thickness calculation. Settings below can be changed before and after the calculation. A new calculation will overwrite the color map values, if ''Freeze min/max values'' is off.
Visualization
Limit values to min/max			Off: Values above the maximum or below the minimum values of the defined ''Color map'' will be shown in the color defined by ''Outside min/max color''. On: The color of the minimum or maximum value will be assigned to the values outside the color map range.
Outside min/max color			This color will be assigned to values outside the ''Color map'' range, if setting ''Limit values to min/max'' is off.
Outside min/max transparent			Off: Show values outside of the color map value range in the color defined with ''Outside min/max color''. On: Values are hidden, if they are outside of the color map min/max values.
Freeze min/max values			Off: New calculations will overwrite the ''Color map'' values. On: Color map values will be kept for new calculations.
Color map presets			Presets that contain predefined colors and the ''Number of values'' for the ''Color map''. Shows ''User defined'' when no preset matches the ''Color map'' settings chosen. Presets can be adjusted and added: Installation directory\Resources\presets.xml.
Reverse colors			On: Reverses the color sequence of the ''Color map''.
Show color bands			Off: Shows a gradient transition between colors on the geometry and in the legend. On: Shows color bands instead.
	Color map
	Number of values		Number of values and colors. Changing the number will trigger a recalculation of the intermediary values and colors.
	Reset min/max		Resets all ''Color map'' values to the min/max values of the calculation. Ignores ''Freeze min/max values''.
	Value automation
	Update intermediate values		Interpolates the intermediate values of the color map. Helpful after editing the min/max values of the color map.
	Apply quantiles		Removes outlying values from the color map. The top and bottom 5 % of values are ignored to focus on the values in the middle.
	Apply logarithmic scale		Uses a logarithmic scale on the color map. Sometimes linear intervals obscure very small but important value ranges that are close together. This spreads those small ranges and assigns them a larger color spectrum, making them more expressive.
	Miscellaneous
	Apply selection to others		Color map results with different settings cannot be meaningfully displayed in the legend. This applies the settings of the selected result to all other visible results and updates the color map and legend accordingly.
Unify properties			If two or more heatmap nodes (of the same type) with different visualization properties are selected, they have to be unified before we can display the visualization settings.
Legend
Show histogram		false	On: Color legend shows a dotted line indicating the frequency distribution of the values.
Number of decimal places		4	Specifies the displayed decimal places of the color map values.
Show equidistant values		false	Off: All legend intervals are spaced according to their numeric value. On: All legend intervals are spaced with equal distances, irrespective of their numeric values. This improves visibility for very small intervals.

Tutorial

The wall thickness function: Heatmap can be accessed via the Analyze > Heat map tab.

In contrast to the punctual wall thickness measurements (Measurement tab), the entire surface of a selection is colored in the wall thickness heat map analysis. The color assigned to the wall thickness can be taken from the color scale on the right edge of the model area.

Analogous to the wall thickness measurement, the wall thickness heat map can be calculated on the basis of the ray based or rolling ball (sphere) method (see paragraph below). The default settings allow you to choose between both methods and a faster, more detailed or user-defined calculation.

Difference between ray based and rolling ball (sphere) methods

To illustrate the difference and the value of the two methods, it is useful to display the tessellation by pressing the [F9] key (the left screenshot in the examples below). In general, higher tessellation qualities (more triangles) offer more detailed results .

Ray based

The following screenshot shows a punctual wall thickness measurement on the left (tab Measurement > Wall thickness > Ray). The orange mouse pointer stands perpendicular to the underlying tessellation triangle. To determine the wall thickness, a ray perpendicular to the triangular surface was fired at this point until another triangle was hit. The two penetration points generated in this way define the distance or wall thickness measured here.

To calculate the wall thickness heat map (screenshot on the right), the number of triangles is increased depending on the setting or default setting and a ray is fired at the triangle center of gravity for each triangle. The model is colored interpolated according to the determined distances over the triangles.

Rolling ball (Sphere)

The following screenshot shows a punctual wall thickness measurement on the left (tab Measurement > Wall thickness > Sphere). At the clicked point, a sphere is created tangentially and extended until the sphere touches another triangle of the tessellation. The diameter of the sphere indicates the wall thickness.

To calculate the wall thickness heat map (screenshot on the right), the number of triangles is increased depending on the setting or default setting and a sphere is created at the triangle center of gravity for each triangle. The model is colored interpolated according to the determined diameter over the triangles.

Create wall thickness heat map

Proceed as follows to generate a wall thickness heat map:

▪Activate the Wall thickness function via the Analyze tab.

▪Select the parts for sampling. Without selection the wall thickness is calculated for all visible parts.

▪A preset can be selected or user-defined settings can be made in the tool window.

▪Click the [Compute] button. The calculation duration depends on the combination of tessellation quality, settings/presettings, selection and the available computing power.

▪Once the process is complete, the original geometry disappears and the wall thickness analysis result is displayed.

Further information:

▪The wall thickness heat map is anchored as a new geometry Wall thickness calculation under the CreatedNodes/HeatMapSet node. Like other geometries, the heat map can be hidden, scaled and edited (see chapter Selection Mode to Hide, Delete and Ghost Objects).

▪The color scheme of the legend is initially adjusted to the computed minimum and maximum values. They correspond to the values in the Results section.

▪For better visualization, the interval of the color scheme can be limited to the respective wall thicknesses (see figure below), in order to visualize small changes in wall thickness at certain intervals.

▪In the following images you first see the result with the calculated maximum and minimum wall thickness, followed by a visualization with manually restricted maximum wall thickness, whereby the lettering becomes visible.

In the bottom right figure, only the maximum value of the legend is limited to 0.1 inches. Thus, all wall thicknesses greater than 0.1 inch are colored blue, but the entire color scheme is now divided into the interval of 0.0421 and 0.1 inch. As a result, the lettering becomes visible, since this small change in wall thickness is already assigned to a new color.

The heat map of the wall thickness analysis can be saved in a view as usual (see chapter Views).

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