Entity Measurement

To output various properties of entities, the following Measure command options are available.

Measure Between

Measure Between { { Vertex|Curve|Surface |Volume|Node} <id1> | Location <options> | Plane <options> | Axis <options> } With { {Vertex|Curve|Surface|Volume|Node} <id2> | Location <options> | Plane <options> | Axis <options> }

Measure Between {Surface|Curve} <id1 > [Surface|Curve] <id2> [Node]

Measure Between {Vertex|Curve|Surface|Volume|Node|Edge|Face|Tri|Hex|Tet} <id1> With {Vertex|Curve|Surface|Volume|Node|Edge|Face|Tri|Hex|Tet} <id2>

The Measure Between command outputs the distance from one entity, location, plane, or axis to the next. The two entities in the command should be separated by the word "with". The result will always be the minimum distance between entities. For example, measuring between two spheres will output the minimum distance between them, not the distance between centroids. The example shown below will output the minimum distance between vertex 1 and surface 2.

measure between vertex 1 surface 2

The second form of the command is just for surfaces or curves and contains the Node argument. This argument attempts to measure between corresponding nodes on a pair of surfaces or curves. The command tries to determine a one-to-one mapping of nodes between the pair. It returns the greatest distance between any two nodal pairs, least distance between any two nodal pairs, and average distance between all of the nodal pairs. The mapping algorithm works best on surfaces if they are parallel.

The last form of the command measures between any geometry or mesh entities. The measurement to the mesh entities is to their center (i.e. the averaged vector location of all of the nodes belonging to the mesh entity).

With 2 entities selected in the graphics window, the user can right click one of the entities and measure the distance between the entities.

Measure Small

Measure Small {Length|Area|Volume|All} {Body|Surface} <id_list>

The Measure Small command locates all of the lengths, areas, or volumes smaller than the Measure Small Tolerance setting. Entities meeting the small tolerance criteria are listed in the output window and typically highlighted in the view port. The following two commands set the small tolerance to 0.1 and output all of the curves within body 1 with lengths at or below the small tolerance.

set measure small tolerance 0.1

measure small length body 1

Measure Angle

Measure Angle { Direction <options> | Plane <options> | Axis <options> } With { Direction <options> | Plane <options> | Axis <options> }

The Measure Angle command displays the interior angle between the two entered entities. When a plane and a direction are specified, the angle between the direction vector and its projection into the plane is displayed. The measured angle represents the distance between the orientations of entities, and does not require the entities to intersect. Angles of model features can be measured by using the various options associated with the Direction, Planes, and Axis commands.

measure angle direction tangent curve 1 with plane surf 1

Measure Void

Measure Void [Face | Tri] <range>[No_Checks]

The Measure Void command takes a closed list of quadrilaterals or triangles and calculates the volume of the internal region defined by the given list of elements. This command assumes that the normals on the given elements are consistently ordered. If the normals are pointing away from the interior of the void, the reported volume may be negative. This command will check to ensure that the given elements do form a closed, manifold shell, otherwise an error is reported. Common uses will be to calculate the volume of an internal void for use in determining bulk element properties for a thermal analysis.

Rather than issuing an error, the no_checks option does not check for closure of the faces and will compute a void volume regardless of their watertightness. This is useful if faces are all touching, but may not have complete topological closure.

Measure Volume

Measure Volume <range> [Overlap | Shell]

The Measure Volume command prints summary information about the specified volumes and surfaces of these volumes, such as average volume, minimum volume, angles, average surface area, etc. If the shell option is specified information about the shells of the volumes is additionally printed. The overlap option does not print any summary information, but only reports pairs of intersecting volumes.

Measure Surface

Measure Surface <range>

The Measure Surface command prints summary information about the specified surfaces and curves of these surfaces, such as average area, minimum area, angles, minimum curve length, etc.