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(continued...) Surfaces can also be trimmed to each other with control over which pieces are kept or cut away.
Fillets can be applied to edges between surfaces and separate surface bodies can be combined using face blends.
The knit surface feature allows complex forms to be built up.
It does not absorb the constituent features which allows easy access for editing and reuse but can rapidly generate a long feature manager tree.
Ultimately surfaces will be used to create solids by thickening or as cutting tools, but their use can facilitate the generation of forms not possible purely with solids or simply be a more efficient method of construction.
In order to be able to create complex surfaces, the curve handling and analysis tools have been enhanced.
Splines for instance can now also be created in 3D sketches and a curvature evaluator tool is available to display both curvature and curve inflections.
This plot line updates dynamically as the spline is manipulated.
Points on a spline can be assigned perpendicular and tangent constraints to other sketch elements.
The new Moving Frame tool is used to control splines without the inevitable increase in complexity that occurs through adding further control points.