How to evaluate surface quality

[giangnguyen]

By the way, I use Neon Lighting as you suggested to check the surface. But I do not know how good/ bad it is. Could you please give me some comments how to evaluate surface quality?

Thank you very much.

 

[MrCATIA]

Thank you for the question, Giang. I apologize for taking so long to answer it, but it requires some research on my part in order to provide a proper answer that will help you and others that might read this in the future.

CATIA V5 has many tools that assist in the developing a high-quality surface model. Before discussing surface analysis, it is important to understand "continuity".

I have two comments to start (what I hope) will be a series of detailed responses:

1. "A good surface is made from good curves. And a good curve is made from good points." I was taught this is my very first CATIA class, and have found this to be very true!

2. There are many tools and aids in CATIA V5 that help evaluate surface quality. Some of these are (in no order):

• Shading, especially when rotating the model and watching the reflections
• Isoparametric Curves creating a mesh on the surface to better see the surface inflections
• Sections; either a series of intersecting curves or using the Section tool
• Join, to check tangency and check connexity
• Surface Analysis tools; such as Porcupine and Curvature Analysis

 

[MrCATIA]

Wikipedia has a short explanation of "continuity" and how it applies to curve and surface quality:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeform_surface_modelling