Surfaces > Draft Surfaces

Creates ruled surfaces (surfaces that are flat in some direction at every point) by pulling a surface from a curve or surface curve in a given direction, or by pulling a surface curve at an angle to the surface normal.

About the tool

The Draft/Flange tool has two distinct uses and effects based on the Mode setting:

Draft surfaces start from a set of curves and extend away from the curves at an angle to a pull direction.
Use Draft when you want to make sure a surface can be extracted from an injection mold.
Flange surfaces start from a set of isoparametric curves, surface edges or curves on surface, and extend away at an angle to the original surface.
For example, you can use Flange mode to build a “skirt” surface around the edge of another surface.

Draft/Flange Surface Options

Construction Type: Set the type of surface created by the tool: Draft or Flange. See the overview above for descriptions of the different modes.
Angle: The initial angle of the surface from the pull direction/normal. You can change this value using the draft angle/surface depth manipulator when you use the tool.
Surface Depth: The initial depth of the surface from the original curves. You can change this value using the draft angle/surface distance manipulator when you use the tool.
Double Sided: Turn this option on to build draft surfaces on both sides of a curve simultaneously.
Single Surface: This option only appears if Double Sided is on. Turn it on to build only one surface, extending on both sides of the curve.
Pull Direction: This option appears only when Construction Type is Draft.

User Defined – You will explicitly set the initial pull direction vector.

Automatic – The Draft tool will automatically figure out the best initial pull direction each time you use the tool.

The following Vector Options appear only when Pull Direction is User Defined.
Explicit Control: Turn this option on if you want to specify the exact degree and number of spans of the Draft or Flange surface.

Degree: The Degree and Spans options only appear if Explicit Control is turned on.

Degree of the draft or flange surface in the U direction. (The surface is always of degree 1 in the V direction.)
Spans: Number of spans of the draft or flange surface in the U direction. (The surface always has a single span in the V direction.)

Vector options

These options appear only when Construction Type is Draft.

X,Y, Z: Select one of these to specify a pull direction along that axis.
View: Select this option to specify a pull direction normal to the current view. The vector is not drawn in the view windows.

If the current view is changed, click Refresh View Vector to update the vector.
Picked: Selecting this option lets you specify the name of an existing vector in the Picked Vector field, or pick the vector in the view. This vector defines the pull direction.
Manip: This option is selected automatically when you update the pull direction by manually modifying the manipulator in the view.
Refresh View Vector: This button only appears if View is selected. Click it to update the vector if the view has been modified.
Retain Vector: Click this button to create a vector construction object in the view windows. Unless you do this, the vector direction you specified is used by the tool, but you will not see and be able to re-use the vector.

Control options

Create History: Save the Draft history for later editing. If you turn on Create History, you can edit the original curves and the draft/flange surface will automatically update.