How to reassign a generation rail of a surface in Alias?

Skills software and technology
1

I need to delete a surface in alias, which will then delete the construction history of an adjacent surface.

However, the surfaces are just position aligned, and I will keep the curve running between them after I’ve removed the unwanted surface.

With the qryed tool, I can bring up the rail options for that adjacent surface, and see how gen.1 is lifted from the other surface edge.

So, my question now is, how can I reassign that gen.1 surface edge to the curve that’s in the same place instead?

I really, really do not want to loose the history of the adjacent surface that I want to keep, because there’s projections, trims and lots of blend curves coming from it, and I might still want to tweak its outlines.

Thanks!

2

i use helper surfaces all the time. i put them in a layer called “workers” or “Not used” and hide them. The history remains and if i need to modify something it all still works. just dont include them in the final file.

3

Yeah this may be the best route to go I do the same thing, for example if I generate a curve on surface with an intersection, I won’t delete the intersected surface but I will hide it on a seperate layer so that down stream I can go in and tweak that surface and everything will rebuild nice and tidily.

4

I think his question is whether you can dynamically change the edge definition from a surface edge to a curve without rebuilding the surface. This is kind of a moot point though because you can just throw the helper surface on a hidden, hide it, template it, etc.

5

As far as I know there is no way to reassign an input curve for a surface you’ve already generated. If there is I have no idea how to go about it.

But if you erase your surface, you should still maintain any history inputs that came after. So if you created a rail and delete the surface whose edged you reference, but you had a bunch of trims on it, the surface trim will still maintain history, your rail will just stop updating.

Otherwise if you want your rail itself to maintain history with how it was created, I think you’ll just need to recreate it.

There could be some hidden way of doing this that I’m not aware of, but the method of hiding my construction objects is how I’ve always worked.

6

Thank you for your tips!

The hiding surfaces sounds like pushing the dirt under the carpet, but I’ll use that solution for now. :slight_smile:

But yes, my question was really on how to reassign an input curve for a surface that’s already generated.

I’m damaged since I come from Solidworks, and that’s clearly Solidworks thinking, but still… :wink: