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To add a plate which covers an entire surface:
Ø Choose a surface from the Add Surface Plate sub-menu under the Plate menu
Ø Type in a name for the Plate
Ø Select a material for the plate from the pop-up menu
Ø Select a Plate Development Method for the plate from the pop-up menu. If necessary specify any additional information for the plate development
Ø Click OK
The plate will be displayed in the drawing windows and it will be selected. Plates are highlighted when they are selected by inverting the interior of the plate with a grey pattern. You can control the visibility of plates by using the Plate check box in the Structure… dialog from the Display menu.
Note:
Switching to a lower precision
significantly speeds up the plate development calculations, especially if you
are using the General development method. However, you should still define the
plate at highest precision and develop the final plate at highest precision
before exporting.
See Plate
Precision on page 65
Plating an entire surface by using the surface plating method uses untrimmed Maxsurf surfaces. Trimming can be done manually in AutoCAD (or other drafting programs) after exporting the plate part with the intersection lines displayed. You can display the Intersections by using the Contours dialog from the Display menu.
Deck intersection line
Alternatively you can use the intersection contours as the boundary for your plate. You can only do this in situations in which an intersection contour defines one side of the plate.
Definition of triangular trimmed plates is described in Developing Triangular Plates on page 58.
Workshop can mirror expanded plates across the centreline for plates that stretch across the centreline such as bow cones, deck plates and transoms etcetera.
Plates may be defined so that they are mirrored port and starboard across the ship centreline. To do this, the plate must have at least one edge on the ship centreline; in the case of several edges lying on the centreline, the longest edge will be taken as the mirroring axis. To define a mirrored plate, select the plate edges as normal (but only on one side of the vessel) – or choose Add Surface Plate from the Plate menu – and tick the “Mirror plate expansion across centreline” option at the bottom of the dialog.
Note that when a plate is first defined, the mirror option will always be enabled, even if there is no suitable edge for mirroring. Once the plate is defined, however, this option will not be available if the plate does not have an edge on the vessel centreline.