- I'm going to talk about planes now.
Select the plane icon.
You can either download the reference file
from the exercise files, or you can select on the function,
press F1 on the keyboard, and download
the Planes1 Part file from the CATIA help documentation,
and just simply open it up.
So, here I have my file.
The first type of plane I want to create
is what's called offset from plane.
Simply select the plane, the direction
you want to go in, and the distance.
Select OK, and there's your plane.
I'm going to go into the plane function.
This time I'm going to go parallel through point.
Select your plane, select the point
that you want to go through, in this case
the vertex of that surface, and that plane
is now parallel through that point.
Go into plane,
angle, normal to plane.
So, for this, I only need to specify your rotation axis.
And that rotation axis needs to sit on the plane
that you're going to use as a reference.
So here, specify this curve, pick my reference plane,
and now, enter in the angle.
I can say normal to plane, it'll go out 90 degrees.
Select OK and there's my plane.
Go ahead and just hide that.
Go back into the plane.
We have through three points.
So, with this, it's an order thing.
The first point you select is where the
graphical representation of the plane's going to go.
So I'll select this point first, this point second,
this point third, and as you can see,
there's my plane through that first point.
We have what's called through two lines.
In this case, I'm going to pick line one,
and here, I'm going to pick this curve.
You can see they're obviously not
on a plane together, but I'm going to pick it.
And what it does, is based off of that line
or the two lines, it fits the best plane
in through this line.
You'll notice it basically starts out through that line.
And even though this is off plane, it is still
basically parallel to that curve, so it can fit a plane.
It's almost as if it's projecting this up to that location.
You know, you have the two endpoints here.
You have the two endpoints here, figures it out.
If I have this line, let's say this was at an angle,
I could say forbid non coplanar lines, and it won't do it.
If I click this right now, it's going to say no,
but if I turn that off, it'll say yes, and it's, again,
basing it off of that line and one of the endpoints
off the other line to form that
third point to give you that plane.
Next, I have through point and line.
In this case,
the point, pick any point out in space, and
that line, again, as long as that point does not fall
on that line, meaning it's not colinear
to that line, it will form a plane.
Remember, two points form a line.
That third point forms a plane.
So, as long it's not sitting on
that line, you will get a plane.
Next is through planar curve.
Now, with through planar curve, it's looking for
a line, now, I apologize, a curve.
In this case, the line is selected, because I had that
from the previous time I tried using the curve
and it gave me an error message,
because that line, again, does not form a plane.
If I specify this spline, you'll notice it goes to the
actual plane of that spline.
So, as long as the curve is planar,
you can get a plane to fit on that curve.
If it's slightly off plane, you can put
three points on it and do a best fit.
There's another way you can do that.
I'll show you here in a moment.
I have normal to curve.
This is a favorite of mine as well, the planar curve
and normal to curve, use these a lot.
And with this, the spline is selected
and the default is the middle.
I can either drive it through an existing point,
or I could say ratio of curve length,
and place it on that curve.
You'll notice it stays radial, perpendicular to that curve.
That's what normal means, radial or perpendicular.
We'll go back into plane.
Next is what's called tangent to surface.
So, for this, I have a surface out here.
I can pick the surface and specify a point.
So, if I have a large curve on that surface
and have a midpoint, I can do the same with that point
on that surface, and it'll be tangent at that point.
Next is by equation.
Now, if you have the actual mathematical equation
forming a vector, you can enter those inputs here.
So, some people, they know exactly what they need,
sometimes a tooling direction, whatever that may be,
you may have those vectors and you can specify them here.
What I actually use this function for a lot,
is oftentimes, especially when you're
doing something in a styling sense.
You have a non-orthogonal
or a plane that can't be projected around a
default, like, XYZ axis, and you're looking at it from
just a, let's say, a perspective from your
eye point of view, and you want to
look down your eye's point of view.
You can come into by equation and say parallel to screen.
And what it does, is it automatically fills in
the vector that you're looking down, and then you can
use this again as a reference, over and over again.
Right now, I have it going through the vertex of this.
If I wanted to, I can have it go through a different point.
This is kind of nice, because if I change this,
and I say parallel to screen, it'll recalculate
that vector orientation as well.
And then, mean through points.
So, with this, you pick as many points as you want.
And as you can see, once I get to that third point,
it starts putting that plane in and every additional point
I add in, it readjusts that plane to fit
through those points, through the best fit,
or the mean of all of those points.
So, oftentimes, you end up, get a curve from another group,
maybe they scan something in, and it's supposed
to be planar, but it's slightly off plane.
You can throw a bunch of points on that curve
and then pick those points to drive
the best fit plane through those curves.