Part RefineShape

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Revision as of 10:11, 3 February 2024 by Furgo (talk | contribs) (Add note about manually having to add ParametricRefine parameter)

Part RefineShape

Menu location
Part → Create a copy → Refine Shape
Workbenches
Part
Default shortcut
None
Introduced in version
-
See also
Part SimpleCopy, Part TransformedCopy, Part ElementCopy, OpenSCAD RefineShapeFeature

Description

The Part RefineShape produces a non-parametric copy with a refined shape, that is, with certain edges and faces cleaned up.

After certain boolean operations, like Part Fuse, some lines from the previous shapes may remain visible. This tool produces a copy of that boolean result, and cleans up those seams.

Alternatively, to produce other non-parametric copies use Simple Copy, Transformed Copy, and Element Copy

Original boolean result with 11 faces (left), and refined shape copy with 7 faces (right).

Usage

  1. Select an object that you wish to clean and copy.
  2. Go to the menu Part → Create a copy → Refine shape.
  3. A cleaned, independent copy of the original object is created; the original object is hidden.

As of version 0.19 and above the result defaults to a parametric (linked) copy.

This behavior can be changed in the Parameter editor:

  1. Go to the subgroup: BaseApp/Preferences/Mod/Part. Note: you might need to manually create the parameter in the next step if it's not present already
  2. Change ParametricRefine of type Boolean to false to get the old behavior (independent copy).

See other parameters in Fine-tuning.

Notes

  • This function can be used as the last step in the modelling work to clean up shapes in a traditional constructive solid geometry workflow.
  • This function may help to clean up the model before applying another feature, such as a Fillet.
  • This clean up may stop 3D printers from printing unwanted edges once the solid model is exported to a mesh format.
  • This function can also be used after converting a mesh to a shape (ShapeFromMesh) to clean up the residual edges on flat faces.
  • Some interesting information about what is happening with placement and how to access by Python can be found in this forum post.

Limitations

  • The refinement algorithm only works on shells. Therefore it iterates over the shells of the input shape and then for each shell it creates a new shell with joined faces wherever possible. This means that if your input shape is only a face, wire, edge or vertex then the algorithm does nothing.
  • Unlike the OpenSCAD RefineShapeFeature command, Part RefineShape won't update when the preceding shapes are changed.

Scripting

The Python command for refining a shape is the following:

shape.removeSplitter()