Parasolid 33.1 has been released by Siemens Digital Industries Software with enhancements that reach into B-rep, convergent modeling (facet data) and mobile platforms. Parasolid is the primary geometry kernel used in CAD programs such as NX, SOLIDWORKS and Solid Edge and many more.
Classic B-rep modeling has received enhancements to the software that is already very powerful. According to the press release:
- Spun (revolved) outline creation now supports the option of producing the visible outline (exterior only) or the invisible outline (exterior and interior) as shown in the image above.
- Tracking of outlining operations is improved with an optional report documenting all the originating entities that contributed to that element and mapping outline elements to transforms of the bodies from which the outline was created.
- Slicing of a model for additive manufacturing has been made easier and faster using a single surface tool and a list of offsets to create polyline results.
- Creating edge offsets has improved the identification and trimming of self-intersections for more configurations.
These enhancements are all related to taking sections of revolved models and will help power working with revolved features, creating drawing views, and sectioning for additive manufacturing.
Designers receive faceted data from several sources including 3D scans, medical and dental scans, generative modeling (topology optimization) and sub-division modeling. Additional enhancements in Parasolid 33.1 focused on Convergent modeling (working with the mixed facet and b-rep models).
- Auto matching of tool and target between meshes, and between mesh faces and classic faces is now supported; faces can match exactly, faces can overlap, one face can be within the boundary of the other.
- Face taper and face offset now support a mix of classic and facet faces in a single operation.
- Body offset, hollow and thicken now support a mix of classic and facet faces in a single operation.
- Creating complex mixed blends with different radii and overflowing classic blends onto facet faces.
- Creating smooth overflow in mixed apex-range chamfers.
- Improved cap faces when creating blends and higher quality cap faces when deleting mesh blends.
- Identifying underlying faces of a mesh blend and preserving blend information after repairing meshes.
Faceting is also used for the display and rendering of 3D data displayed on electronic devices. Some of the enhancements in this version focus on speeding up the creation of facets for rendering and other facet operations.
- Rendering functions can now run concurrently with other Parasolid functions, and new functions identify and manage threads that have made GO calls.
- GO functions can be declared as thread-safe, improving the performance of SMP-based concurrency and enabling concurrent rendering via multiple threads.
- Fewer faces are now re-faceted in incremental faceting when using topology matching and improved facets in some configurations when using geometry matching.
New tools help find and fix errors in both b-rep and facet model data.
- Detect and repair degeneracies and flat facets in mesh faces within a specified modeling tolerance.
- Better edge merging in manifold Booleans with improved G1 edge smoothing in a mesh.
- Improved repair of faces and shells in mixed bodies.
This release adds the creation and transmission of lattices support structures for 3D print.
- Attaching of lattices to parts as construction geometry and clipping of a lattice to a surface.
- Creating meshes from lattices with local self-intersections.
- Smart handling of balls and rods at lattice boundary, such as removing rods without balls after clipping.
- Enabling lattices to be transmitted and received.
- Automatic setting of a ball’s minimum radius to match the largest rod attached to it.
Parasolid also adds capabilities for Android and Mac using ARM processors (tablets and mobile hardware)
- Windows 10 version 1809 or later, running on 64-bit ARM-based computers.
- macOS 11.0 or later, running on “Apple Silicon” ARM-based Macintosh computers.