Cover Surface

SharkCAD Pro only

Simple covering algorithms are employed for surfaces that are defined by a set of closed planar curve boundaries. Internally they are represented as a planar analytic surface which are compact and efficient.

Planar covers are useful when combined with the sweep, lathe, extrude profiles into solid tools.

The Cover Surface application also covers planar objects which include islands of interior cutouts with the resulting cover adjusting when the interior regions are updated, shown below.

Planar Covering

Planar Covering with cutouts

Tangent Cover surface with guides

Draw | Surface from Surface | Tangent Cover Surface| Tangent Cover Guide Surface

The Guide Curve option is flexible tool for covering any curve type including points, lines, arcs, circles, ellipses, and splines. Additionally the curves are not required to not touch the boundaries, and may cross over each other, providing the guide curves fall within the projected outline of the cover boundaries.

In the example below, note that the guide curves cross over each other.

In the example below, the guide curves do not touch the cover boundaries.

Guide Constraints

The guide curve tools also accept point objects as guide constraints. The three squares in the image below are point objects used to control the interior shape of the cover surface.

Tangent Covering

Surface Filling and Capping

The Tangent Cover surface will create a surface that is G1 tangent to the neighboring surfaces. The magnitude of the tangents are controlled by the bugle factor which ranges from 0.001 to 1.0

Filling

The example below creates a tangent cover surface between a closed loop of 12 surface edges, filling in the void with a smooth (G1 continuous) surface.

Capping

The example below creates a tangent cover surface between a closed loop of 8 surface edges, capping between the edges with a smooth surface. In this case, the cap height is controlled by the bulge factor.