Surface Object

The Surface object is a very important object as it contains all the objects, properties and methods that describe the surfaces currently in the Maxsurf application. This includes all the properties available in the surfaces window in Maxsurf and methods for moving and altering control points and surfaces.

A summary of all the properties and methods of a Surface object are listed in the table below.

Property	Type	Description
Assembly	Long	Get the ID of the assembly this surface belongs to
Color	OLE_COLOR	Set/Get the Colour of the surface
ID	Long	Read Only. Returns the ID of the surface.
Index	Long	Read Only. Returns the Index of the surface
Locked	Boolean	Set/Get if the surface is locked for modification
LongitudinalStiffness	Long	Set/Get the Surfaces Longitudinal Stiffness
Material	Long	Set/Get the surface material
Name	String	Set/Get the descriptive name for a surface
SkinDirection	msSurfaceSkinDirection	Set/Get the surfaces skin direction
Split	Boolean	Set/Get if a surface is split in the body plan view
Symmetrical	Boolean	Set/Get if the surface is symmetrical about a Centreline Plane
Thickness	Double	Set/Get the surface thickness
Transparency	Long	Set/Get the percentage transparency for the surface
TransverseStiffness	Long	Set/Get the Transverse Stiffness of the Surface
Type	msSurfaceType	Set/Get the surface type
Use	msSurfaceUse	Set/Get the use of the surface (hull/internal)
Visible	Boolean	Set/Get if a surface is Visible

Method	Type	Description
ControlPointLimits	iRows As Long, iColumns As Long	Read Only. Returns the number of Rows and Columns in a surface.
Delete	-	Deletes a Surface
GetControlPoints	iRow As Long, iColumn As Long, xVal As Double, yVal As Double, zVal As Double	Gets the x,y,z coordinates for a control point, given the row and column indices
Move	X As Double, Y As Double, Z As Double	Moves a surface
Rotate	dRoll As Double, dPitch As Double, dYaw As Double, dLongCentre As Double, dTransCentre As Double, dVertCentre As Double	Rotates a Surface
SetControlPoint	iRow As Long, iColumn As Long, xVal As Double, yVal As Double, zVal As Double	Sets the x,y,z coordinates for a control point, given the row and column indices

OLE_COLOR

The OLE_COLOR data type represents a colour as a BGR (Blue, Green, Red) value. The OLE_COLOR value of a colour specified by its red, green and blue components (each of which has a value from 0 - 255) is determined using the following expression:

   OLE_COLOR value = red + (green x 256) + (blue x 256²)

The OLE_COLOR values of some common colours are as follows:

          Black                0
          Dark Grey         4210752
          Grey                 8421504
          Light Grey         12632256
          White               16777215
          Red                   255
          Green               65280
          Blue                  16711680
          Magenta           16711935
          Cyan                 16776960

Surface Example

To determine the OLE_COLOR of the surface i, Use the Color property. This will return a value as described above.

MsgBox msDesign.Surfaces(i).Color

Alternatively, we could set a cell colour in Excel to be the same as the surface colour in Maxsurf using the code;

Range("E13").Interior.Color = msApp.Design.Surfaces(1).Color

To determine the number of Rows and Columns of Control Points in the i^th surface;

Dim NumRows As Long

Dim NumCols As Long

msDesign.Surfaces(i).ControlPointLimits NumRows, NumCols

MsgBox "There are " & NumRows & " rows and " & NumCols & " columns"