Creating a Solid Model

3.Enter the X, Y, Z coordinates of the center of the sphere under Center Position.

4.Press the Insert button to create the sphere.

If it is not visible in the current view, it is either too small to be seen, or it is outside the view. You can either select Zoom Window (if it’s too small), Zoom All (if it’s too large or outside the view) or Zoom Selection to make it visible.

Thin Sheet

A thin sheet is a surface bounded by a polygon. To define a thin sheet, enter the (X, Y, Z) locations of the vertices of the polygon. Once created, a thin sheet can be swept or revolved to create thick solids.

FIGURE 2.7 - Thin Sheet primitive objects

IMPORTANT NOTES:

The thin sheet boundary must be closed. No part of the boundary is allowed to overlap another part of the boundary. The boundary closes by connecting the last point to the first point.

The thin sheet is ordinarily defined as a plane. If you define boundary points that do not lie in a plane, TracePro will create a spline surface to fill the polygon.

Since the thin sheet has no thickness or volume, applying material properties to the thin sheet can lead to misleading errors during a raytrace. For this reason application of the following property types to thin sheets is prevented: Material, Mueller Matrix, Gradient Index, Bulk Scatter, and RepTile.

Thin sheets should primarily be used as reflector elements (with only surface properties defined), or as a precursor to 3 dimensional solids that are created by being swept or revolved from a thin sheet, or as “observation” surfaces available for viewing by an Irradiance Map as rays propagate through the model such as reference planes within a lightpipe.

To create a thin sheet:

1.Select the Thin Sheet tab of the Insert|Primitive Solids dialog box.

2.Enter the X, Y, Z coordinates of the points that you would like to form the polygon boundary for your thin sheet.

3.Press the Insert button to create the thin sheet. If the thin sheet cannot be built, e.g., edges cross one another, then a dialog will appear to say that the sheet cannot be constructed.

2.6	TracePro 5.0 User’s Manual