Evaluate > Parting Line

Creates curves-on-surface at the boundaries of out-of-draft areas.

Some manufacturing processes, such as injection molding, impose restrictions on the shape of an object. To avoid problems, understand the following concepts:

The mold parts are pulled away from the object in a straight line, the pull vector.
If the sides of the mold are too steep, the object cannot leave the mold. As well, the object cannot leave the mold if the mold undercuts itself.
The minimum allowable angle between the sides of the mold and the pull vector is the draft angle.
If part of a surface has an angle less than the draft angle, it is said to be out-of-draft.

Parting Line Control

Direction Type: Select either Rotation or Vector.
Pull Direction: Enter 3D coordinates to define a direction in which the object would be removed from its mold.

For example, if you want the pull vector to run along the Z axis, enter 0, 0, 1.
Draft Angle: Enter the draft angle.

If the angle between a surface point and the pull vector is less than this value, the surface point is out-of-draft, and is colored pink.

If the angle between a surface point and the pull vector is more than this value, the surface point is in-draft, and is colored green.
Subdivision: The quality of the curve-on-surface projection, from 1 to 6. The higher the value, the more precise the result. Use low values for draft quality, use higher values for final results.
Vector/Plane: Enter the name of a vector/plane to position/align the manipulator with it. (You can also click a vector/plane to align the manipulator with it. Or you can select the vector/plane and the surface before selecting the tool.)
Visual: Draw fast polylines instead of curves-on-surface.

These lines are mainly for display purposes. Although you can pick them (to delete them, for example), you cannot use them to create geometry.
Tolerance: When Visual is checked on, this value defines the quality of the visual curves independently of the tessellation tolerance. This lets you set the visual tolerance to a smaller value to get better quality visual curves, without reducing the tessellation tolerance used for shading.

Control Options

Create History: Save the history of the new curves-on-surface for later editing. If you turn Create History on, you can modify the surfaces and the curves-on-surface update.
Auto Recalc.: Update the curves-on-surface as you change the values in the window.

Buttons

Recalc: When Auto Recalc. is off, use this button to update the curves on surface to correspond to the current options.
Undo All: Undo all the changes made by the tool and return to the original surface.
Next: Finish creating curves-on-surface on the current surface and prompt for a new surface to evaluate.