Ensure that your parts will smoothly work in your manufacturing process by using our Draft Analysis tool.
💡 Note: This feature is available to users on our Pro and Scale plans. If you don't have access to this feature but think it would be valuable, please reach out to your Success Manager to discuss options.
Generating your initial analysis
Access the tool by opening a 3D model that contains boundary representation (or BREP) data - this is required for our draft analysis to run, and you will not be offered the option of using draft analysis for models without it.
Click on the Draft Analysis icon to bring you to a new sidebar panel that will give you access to all of the analysis tools and options you'll need to understand how your part will perform in manufacturing.
Before running your analysis, ensure it's being run from the correct perspective by adjusting the position of the model, the pull direction, and the draft angle for your manufacturing process.
Position model: Change your model's position on the X, Y, or Z axes by specific degrees. Your model will adjust in the viewer in real time with these changes.
Pull direction: Select the X, Y, or Z plane for your pull direction. As you hover over each option, the plane will show in the view to demonstrate, and an arrow will appear in the pull direction when an option is selected. You can reverse that option by selecting the arrow button next to the pull direction options.
Optionally, select a face on your model to serve as the pull direction plane by selecting "face" and then choosing which face to use on the model itself.
Draft angle: Input the draft angle (in degrees) that you would like to use as a basis for the analysis. When you enter a number, the colour scale will be updated to demonstrate what will be shown on your model depending on angle.
Optionally, you can turn off lighting effects in the viewer, which will make your model more matte and may increase visibility during our analysis.
When your settings have been adjusted to your needs, click on Run analysis to begin the process.
Post-analysis tools
There are a number of ways you can continue to interact with your model's analysis after it's been run.
Saving your analysis
Leave feedback to save a view of the analysis as it has been run, similar to how feedback will recall views whenever left on a normal 3D model. This will also serve as an option to save the analysis itself, and clicking on the feedback will retrieve the analysis alongside the feedback to ensure that all context is available.
The card under the feedback includes key information such as positioning angles, pull direction, and draft angle.
Click on "Show analysis" to display the full analysis again directly on the model.
Probe tool
Once an analysis is run, the probe tool becomes available for use.
Use this tool to select any location on the model. This will show the draft angle of any face of the model.
To leave a piece of markup showing that angle, use the probe tool to click and then drag your cursor to where the markup should display. This will create a box with the angle and an arrow to indicate which face it applies to.
