You can add a plate which covers just part of a surface by selecting four contours defining the boundary of the plate.
To select a contour:
Ø Click on the contour
To select additional contours:
Ø Hold down the shift key while clicking on each contour
Selected contours are highlighted with a bold line to indicate that they are selected.
All of the four contours defining the plate must lie in the same surface. You may find that it is necessary to turn off the display of other surfaces to allow you to select edges which butt up against another surface.
To add a plate:
Ø Select the four contours which define the boundary of the plate
Ø These should be selected in the order aft butt, forward butt, top/outer seam, bottom/inner seam
Ø Choose Add Plate from the Plate menu
The Plate Info dialog will appear allowing you to specify the plate's name, material and the development method to be used.
Ø Type in a name for the Plate
Ø Select a material for the plate from the drop-down menu
If you do not have the material you require available, use the Edit Materials command from the Edit menu to add materials to the library.
Ø Select the plate expansion method
See Plate Development Method on page 61 for details of the different methods; if you have chosen the General method, select the additional options you require.
Ø Click OK
You can optionally specify the precision of the mesh that is used to develop a plate. You can choose between having Workshop pick a plate precision for you automatically, or specifying your own precision. If you choose Automatic, the actual mesh precision used will depend on your precision settings in Workshop at the time that the plate is calculated.
Note: Workshop warns the user when the calculated plate mesh is more than 2 mm removed from the selected plate contours or edges and then turns the Plate Mesh visibility on for the user to check the plate mesh.
Note : Plate mesh problem detected
After opening a design or adding a plate an error message entitled “Plate mesh problem detected in plate:” may appear. This indicates that one of the plate mesh edges in the named plate deviates from the plate edge by more than the build tolerance of 2mm. When this happens workshop automatically turns on the plate mesh display for the user to review. The plate mesh is the mesh upon which the development is based, if it is incorrect the plate development will be incorrect. A faulty plate mesh is usually caused by either trying to add a triangular plate (see developing triangular plates) or adding a plate using 4 contours which define more than one closed region.
Also see
Workshop Precision on page 10
Plate Precision on page 65