Wall and flange settings in Alias

00:00

To add a finishing detail to the edge of our design surfaces,

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we can use either a tube flange, which adds a rolled edge and then a straight flange surface,

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or a fillet flange, which respects the original edge and trims it away to allow space for the rolled edge and the straight flange.

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So, I'm going to start by having a look at the tube flange because that's the easier one to work with,

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but it still looks quite complex, so what I typically do, we'll just close all the sections with a Shift+click.

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These three are just standard settings.

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So that just leaves us with the tube, which is simply the radius definition, and the flange, which determines the extent of that rolled edge.

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So, if I increase that, you can see that that edge is rolling further or less.

00:51

So, with Sweep Angle, the rolled edge starts tangent to our input surface

00:56

and then rolls around to, in this case, a 90° sweep angle which gives us a normal direction for the flange.

01:03

I have another option which is to define the extent of the rolled edge by a parting line, and this opens up a vector section.

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And this works the other way around.

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It decides on the direction of the flange, and then fits the rolled edge in between, so if I went to Z for example, it goes vertically.

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And this applies even if I don't actually build the flange surface.

01:24

So, if I modify the settings, then I'm controlling the extent of the rolled edge.

01:31

I’ll now take a look at the fillet flange, and again I'll close up the sections.

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This works exactly the same way in that it has the radius value, and it has the flange value,

01:42

which works in the same way.

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But because the fillet flange is required to keep all of this geometry within the boundary of the edge,

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you've got an extra section called Wall that defines an imaginary boundary wall.

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But we can see if we have Show Wall Set on in our Control options that defines the direction from which we want to apply that constraint.

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So, in the Normal direction, we're looking this way and containing all the geometry within that imaginary wall.

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If I switch to a Draft Angle, and I go in the Z direction,

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you can see this imaginary wall is now vertical, and that's providing the constraint for the geometry.

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Now, one of the reasons that Fillet Flange can get complex is that we can have a draft direction for our imaginary wall.

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And if we go down to the flange, we can also have a draft direction in terms of a parting line for the flange.

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So, it's useful to remember that the wall is defining the constraint for containing the geometry,

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and the flange is defining the extent of the rolled edge.