Ply GCD
Important properties of the Ply GCD include the following:
• Length and Width: this is determined based on the smallest rectangle that (a) encloses the flattened ply, and (b) has a side aligned with the ply’s fiber direction. In particular, ply Length is the length of a side of this rectangle that is aligned with the ply’s fiber direction, and ply Width is the length of a side of this rectangle that is perpendicular to the play’s fiber direction.
• Surface Area: surface area of one side of the flattened ply. This does not include the area of cutouts.
• Surface Area Filled: area of the flattened ply’s convex hull. The convex hull is the region that would be enclosed by a string pulled taught around the edges of the ply; it is the smallest convex region that encloses the flattened ply.
The area of this region approximates the area of the ply prior to the removal of cutouts. It helps determine ply layup rate. See
Ply Placing Operation for Hand Layup,
Ply Placing Operation for Automated Tape Layup, and
Ply Placing Operation for Automated Fiber Placement.
• Average Curvature: this is the ply’s average Gaussian curvature. Total average curvature is the product of this geometric property and
Surface Area Filled. Used to determine
Ply Deformation Level.
• Max Curvature: this is the ply’s maximum Gaussian curvature. Total maximum curvature is the product of this geometric property and
Surface Area Filled. Used to determine
Ply Deformation Level.
• Curvature Deviation: this is the standard deviation of the Gaussian curvature across the ply. Total curvature standard deviation is the product of this geometric property and the
Surface Area Filled. Used to determine
Ply Deformation Level.
• Direction: this is the 0 direction of the rosette, specified as a unit vector. It specifies how the ply is oriented with respect to the part as a whole.
• Orientation: this is the angle between the 0 direction of the rosette and the ply’s fiber direction (that is, the direction of the ply’s warp tows).
• Sequence: determines the order in which the ply is laid up. This is set to -1 if the ply’s ordering information is not available in CAD metadata.
• Material Name: specifies the material used by the ply, as extracted from the CAD model. The cost model uses this name to look up material properties in the material table for the current Digital Factory. See
Materials for Composites.
• Non Lamina: if set to true, this GCD is a no-cost feature that does not represent a solid, physical ply, but rather represents a surface (such as a tool contour or part boundary). Note that such elements are often hidden in the CAD file; they appear as plies in aPriori (with Non Lamina set to true) only when they are not hidden in the CAD file.
You can override the extracted value for Non Lamina: set it to false if the GCD represents a physical ply; set it to true otherwise.