Applying Properties

FIGURE 4.42 - Textured RepTile visualization showing the Inverted orientation for a RepTile property that originally contains Holes and Bumps of the five Textured RepTile geometries.

Base Plane Designation for Textured RepTile

Textured RepTile can handle Texture Files that include both holes and bumps over the extent of the applied surface property. For a Textured RepTile that contains both holes and bumps the thickness of the RepTile volume is twice the depth/height value. The Features radiate from the base plane that is located at a distance of the depth/height below the applied surface of the object. Additionally, there is a potential danger in this increase in functionality since one can overlap the Features in a Texture pattern. Thus, an overlapping bump and hold could cause:

•Strange geometry due to undercut at a minimum or

•Ray-trace confusion and errors.

To circumvent this danger, holes take precedence over bumps if the two structures overlap. However, it is suggested for best operation, that users attempt to not have overlapping bumps and holes. Figure 4.43 shows an example of an overlapping bump and hole developed using standard TracePro geometry and Boolean operations. Note that in this example the undercut of the bump by the hole is better shown in Figure 4.44, but ray-trace confusion is expected dependent on the direction in which the ray is traveling. Figure 4.45 shows how Textured RepTile is handled in this situation. Note that the bump is ignored while the hole is seen. Note that overlapping features will not be hidden when View|Display RepTiles|RepTiles & Boundary is checked.

All of the features in a Texture File should be contained in the volume of the object to which the Texture RepTile Property is applied. This is not an issue for the

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RepTile Surfaces

standard Bump and Hole feature orientations, but it is for Mixed or Inverted Textured RepTile properties (see below). For the Mixed and Inverted Textured RepTile orientations, the overall thickness of the RepTile volume is twice that of the depth/height value. For these two orientations, the Features radiate from the base plane which is located at a depth/height below the applied surface of the object. Thus, for the Mixed and Inverted orientations you must make the overall thickness of the object big enough to allow for this increased thickness in the RepTile volume. Table 4.8 describes the location of the base/height/depth plane(s) to which the Features are referenced. Figure 4.46 shows a graphical representation of these various planes.

FIGURE 4.43 - Overlapping bump and hole from a potential Texture File, which causes undercut or potential ray-trace confusion.

TracePro 5.0 User’s Manual

4.53

Applying Properties

FIGURE 4.44 - Undercut example from Fig. 20.

FIGURE 4.45 - How TracePro interprets overlapping features in a Texture File - the holes are retained while the bumps are ignored.

4.54	TracePro 5.0 User’s Manual