About Clipping of 3D Model Geometries
The clipping tools are tools in the Graphics window that can be used to look inside of objects in 3D model geometries, in all modeling modes: geometry, physics and materials, mesh, and for result plots. You can use clipping to swiftly hide parts of the geometry that are in the way to, for example, making it easier to do boundary selections inside of complex 3D geometries. These tools are interactive in the Graphics window for 3D models, where you can activate and control the clipping from the Graphics toolbar and directly in the window. Some settings are also available in the View (3D) node’s Settings window. See the sections below for information about the settings for Clip Plane, Clip Box, Clip Sphere, and Clip Cylinder, which you can add from the Graphics toolbar or by right-clicking a 3D View node. Each clip feature is visualized by a frame depicting its geometric shape and a gizmo that lets you interactively position and orientate the clip feature inside of the Graphics window. Several clipping features can be combined and the clipping of each can be inverted to achieve a desired hiding of parts of the 3D geometry. You can cancel any interactive clipping operation by pressing the Escape (Esc) key.
The clipping of the geometry in the Graphics window is a visual tool for looking inside a 3D geometry. That means that when using general selection tools for selecting geometric entities, such as pressing Ctrl+A or using a box selection, all applicable geometric entities in the geometry are selected, regardless of whether they are visible or not in the clipped geometry.
Clipping of the geometry in the Graphics window is not supported when view scales are used for the camera in the 3D plot.
From the Graphics toolbar, you can also choose from the following settings for the active clipping tools, from the Clipping Active () menu:
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Click the Clipping Active () button to activate or turn off clipping. You access the settings below from the drop-down menu that you can open next to the Clipping Active button.
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Click Clip Faces () to activate or turn off clipping of faces in the geometry.
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Click Clip Edges () to activate or turn off clipping of edges in the geometry.
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Click Clip Points () to activate or turn off clipping of points in the geometry.
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Click Highlight Intersection () to activate or turn off the highlighting of intersections between the clipping tool and the geometry.
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Click Show Frames () to activate or turn off the display of the frames that outline the clipping tools. You can move and resize the clipping tool by clicking and dragging its frame (clip planes cannot be resized). Double-click the frame to move the focus to the corresponding Settings window under the 3D View node.
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Click Show Gizmos () to activate or turn off the displays of the gizmos that help you to control the clipping tools. By clicking and moving the gizmo you can move and rotate the clipping tool. Double-click it to move to the corresponding node in the Model Builder to view the settings for the corresponding clipping tool. The gizmo also displays dynamic measurement and coordinate values. The steps for the rotation are determined by a preference setting. Open the Preferences dialog box, and on the Graphics Interaction page, enter a value, in degrees, in the Snap angle field (default value: 5 degrees). You can use a snap angle between 0 and 180 degrees. 0 degrees means that the rotation is continuous without snapping. When dragging the gizmo, rotations are performed around the directions of the main x-, y- and z-axes (the center of rotation is the position of the gizmo), while the translation is done along the gizmo’s own axes (xg, yg, zg). Clicking and dragging one of the gizmo axes leads to translation along that hovered-upon axis, while right-clicking and dragging makes it possible to translate the gizmo on the plane derived from the hovered-upon axis — this option is useful when you quickly want to move the gizmo out of the way for a bit.
Figure 6-26: A Clip Cylinder tool removes part of the geometry from the view.
Figure 6-27: A Clip Box tool removes parts of the geometry from the view.
Figure 6-28: A Clip Sphere tool with its gizmo at the center of the Clip Sphere.
The Clip Box, Clip Sphere, and Clip Cylinder tools only affect the rendering when you use the OpenGL renderer and are not available when using software rendering.
The clipping tools are not supported for COMSOL apps when run in web browsers.
If you add a clipping tool and you cannot see the model geometry, select the Invert clipping check box in the Settings window for the clipping tool. You can then reduce the size of the clipping area to cover only part of the geometry and clear the Invert clipping check box if you want to use the normal clipping mode.
Right-click the gizmos to access a context menu that includes some operations applicable for the type of gizmo that you right-clicked, including deleting the gizmo.