From the course: CATIA V5: Class A Surfacing

What are splines? - CATIA Tutorial

From the course: CATIA V5: Class A Surfacing

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What are splines?

- [Instructor] In Catia, there are two different types of splines we need to talk about. First is the generative shape design, or GSD spline, which you should already be familiar with. Next is the 3D curve. This is a nerves type of spline. And there's a couple of creation types we're going to discuss. There's the through points and control points. And with these, if you're not picking any sort of background data, everything that you do select is going to default to what's called a privileged plane. So if I look at my compass and I right mouse click on this, you'll notice that I have a privileged plane for the XY. So this means if I start picking out in space, you'll see those points default to that XY plane. Again, if I pick a point that's off plane or an edge or something like that, then it'll snap to that point. I'm going to cancel, I'm going to right mouse click, change my privileged plane. Now notice the orientation of the compass has changed. I'm now looking at my YZ plane as my privileged plane. And with that, when I go into my 3D curve, you'll notice that the points that I select now default to that plane. These are the actual through points that this spline is running through. If I move this, you'll see the spline changes shape. If I need to add additional points, by default, the next point is going to be added after the last point that I dropped. So if I pick a point out here, you'll notice it goes to the next, or if I need to insert a point somewhere in between, I can come in here and say insert, pick the segment, and then specify the location. This allows me to add more shape and complexity to that curve. If I need to remove a point, I can right mouse click on it. I can remove this point. Or I can come over here and specify remove a point, select the point that I want to get rid of, and it's gone. The next curve type is called control points. So for this curve, when I switch the type, you'll notice that those points become those control vertices, and between those vertices are those halls. These determine the shape of that curve but not as the curve passes through those points. So these are the slopes determined at each one of those locations, and the curve is driven by these locations in those shapes. And it operates in the same fashion as the through points as far as being able to insert an additional control point, and the movement of, as well as the removal. Other options that you have in the menu are to disable geometry detection. So if I'm drawing something and I have background data that I don't want to accidentally select, I can turn this on, and no data will be selected. Another option I have is hide the previsualization curve. If I turn this off, it's going to show that curve, and what this will do is it'll show me what that curve would look like if I select the next point. For this course, I'd like to turn that off and visualize the curve as it is.

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