A way to display curvature on a Maxsurf design is to select a contour or group of contours, and use the Show Curvature command from the Display menu. Curvature may be displayed on all surface contours except intersection lines.

This will display "Porcupines" perpendicular to the curve. The length of the porcupine is inversely proportional to the square root of the radius of curvature at that point on the curve. I.e. the longer the porcupine line, the smaller the radius and a smaller radius means more curvature. The value of the smallest radius on a given curve is displayed numerically at the end of the porcupine located at the corresponding position on the curve. The number of porcupines is determined by the current Precision.

Curvature may be displayed on any plane or three-dimensional contours e.g. waterlines or surface edges. Displaying the curvature of three-dimensional curves in the perspective view will highlight any torsion in the curve.

 View a video that will show you the different curvature display tools for curves such as Curvature porcupines and Compress view. The video will also show some steps to manually improve the fairness of this curve.

Ø  Select a contour by clicking on it.

It will be highlighted with a different line thickness and colour. To select more than one contour, shift-click on other contours.

Ø  Select Show Curvature from the Display menu

To hide the display of curvature porcupines,

Ø  Hide Curvature from the Display menu.

The lengths of the curvature porcupines may be scaled in the Curvature Scaling Factor field in the Preferences dialog. See Maxsurf Preferences on page 64.

For other ways to display curvature on a surface, see Rendering a Surface on page 92.