Learn about the different utilities of the inspect panel in a workspace model, including the measure tool, interference inspection, and section analysis. This article breaks down the functionality of these tools, providing insights into their application in different design scenarios.
Key Insights
- The inspect panel provides a variety of tools for model analysis, including the measure tool, which measures distances and angles; the interference tool, which identifies any intersections between components; and the component color cycling toggle, which aids in component differentiation in large assembly files.
- Section analysis, another feature of the inspect panel, provides a detailed look into the model, allowing designers to understand it better. It can display results in various formats, for example, component colors when the component color cycling is toggled on, and in hatched mode.
- The properties dialog box can be accessed by right-clicking the base component, providing information about the specific component, including data on area, density, mass, and volume. This tool offers a faster workflow for obtaining such information compared to using the inspect tools in the model workspace.
In this video, we will look at the Inspect panel in our Model workspace. I will use the LAMP file to look at the tools in this video.
If we go to the Inspect panel, we can see Measure, Interference, some detailed analysis tools for 3D geometry, and Component Color Cycling Toggle. Component Color Cycling Toggle, the keyboard shortcut Shift+N, allows us to toggle between changing our components from their visual or physical appearance and placing a color on that component. This is helpful in large assembly files when we need to understand which parts of our components are found in the canvas, browser, and timeline.
Again, that keyboard shortcut is Shift+N, or it can be found by going to Inspect > Component Color Cycling Toggle. The most common Inspect tool is the Measure tool. The Measure tool is commonly used to measure distances and angles.
You can see that I have a selection filter of Face, Edge, Vertex, Body, and Component. I will leave it at Face, Edge, Vertex, and I will select this face first. You see that before I select anything else, I am given an area and loop length of my face.
If I orbit my model and select the opposite face, it will give me the distance between those two faces. If I select a third face or edge, it will keep the first and replace the second selection set. I will hit Close and go to Measure one more time.
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This time, if I select this face and this slanted face, I will get an angled dimension with the results here, and again, the area and loop length of my specific faces. At any time, I can click on these results to copy them to the clipboard and paste them in a different file program or word processor. If I go to Inspect > Interference and select all of my components, you will see that if I hit Compute, my interference results are found.
I can use this tool to understand if my components are intersecting with one another. This is important because if there are clashes or collisions present in my model, this may impact my design when I go to manufacturing. We can see by orbiting my model that all of my interference points are found in this nut-and-bolt assembly for my lampshade.
I can select them in my interference results or in my model. I will hit Cancel. Let's go back to our Inspect panel to look at a few more tools.
Curvature Comb Analysis looks at splines and T-splines to understand 2D continuity, and Zebra Analysis, Draft Analysis, and Curvature Map Analysis look at 3D continuity in our T-splines and mesh models. Section Analysis takes a section of our model so that we can understand it in section, and Center of Mass gives us the center of mass for a specific selection set. Let's turn on Component Color Cycling and look at our Section Analysis.
If I select this face, I can drag my plane into my model to get an understanding of a section through any part of my model. You will notice that the section color is set to "From Component, " which matches the component colors when I have Component Color Cycling toggled on, and I can turn on and off the option to show hatching in my model. If I hit OK, a new tab labeled Analysis appears in my model.
This allows me to turn on and off my section as I continue working in my model. Let's go to Inspect > Component Color Cycling Toggle, and the final thing I would like to look at is the Properties dialog box. If I go to my base component and right-click, I can go to Properties, and it will show me the properties for that specific component, including area, density, mass, and volume.
This workflow may be faster if you are looking for some of that information, rather than using the Inspect tools in our Model workspace.
