Geometry Orientation

The orientation of surface and curve geometry is the direction of the normal and tangent vectors respectively.

Each surface has a forward (or top) side. The evaluation of the surface normal at any point on the surface will return a vector at that point, orthogonal to the surface and directed towards the forward side of the surface. The mesh faces generated on each surface will have the same normal direction as their owning surface.

Each curve has a forward direction and a corresponding start and end vertex. The direction of the curve is from start to end vertex. The evaluation of the tangent vector of the curve at any point along the curve will result in a vector that is both tangent to the curve and pointing in the forward direction of the curve (towards the end vertex along the path of the curve.) The mesh edges created on each curve will be oriented in the same direction as their owning curve. The exported nodes and edges of a curve mesh will be written in the order they occur along the path of the curve.

Higher-dimension geometry has uses lower-dimension geometry with an associated sense (forward or reversed) for each lower-dimension entity. For example, a volume as a sense for each surface used to bound the volume. If the surface normal points outside the volume, then the volume uses the surface with a forward sense. If the surface normal points into the interior of the volume, the volume uses the surface with a reversed sense. Similarly a surface is bounded by a set of curves forming a loop such that the direction of the loop and the sense of each curve results in a cycle that is counter-clockwise around the surface normal.

Adjusting Orientation

By default, a surface is oriented so that its normal points OUT of the volume of which it is a part.  For a merged surface (a surface which belongs to more than one volume) or a free surface (a surface that belongs to no volume, also known as a sheet body), the orientation of the surface is arbitrary.  The orientation of a surface influences the orientation of any elements created on that surface.  All surface elements have the same orientation as the surface on which they are created. The following commands are available to adjust the normal-direction for a surface:

The orientation of a surface can be flipped from its current orientation by using the "Opposite" keyword.  The orientation of a merged surface can be set to point OUT of a specific volume by specifying that volume in the "Volume" keyword.

The following commands are available to adjust the tangent direction of a curve:

The first command reverses the tangent direction of the curve. The second command sets the tangent direction such that it is used by a specific surface with a specified sense. The third command sets the tangent direction of the curve such that the curve starts or ends with the specified vertex. For the latter two forms of the command, the curve must be adjacent to the specified surface or vertex.