Description

The Cuts manager panel provides the necessary tools for editing the definition and display attributes of existing persistent cutting planes and their associated blocks. Note that persistent cutting planes cannot be created using this panel. Instead, they are created using either the tools in the Create, Cut Planes panel or the Make Persistent Cut functionality in the Cutting frame.

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An example of the Cuts panel showing two persistent cut planes: Store-Y-Cut and Store-X-Cut. The first plane slices through one block called "background". The second plane slices through two blocks called "background" and "sphere".

Global

The Global frame at the top of the panel contains a single pull-down list of all the diagnostic functions currently available based on the selected entities. The diagnostic function you select will be used by all visible persistent cutting planes (i.e. this is a global attribute). A complete list of examine functions can be found in the Functions section. For convenience, a Show Color Bar toggle is available to turn on/off the color bar for the current diagnostic function.

Cuts

The list field in the Cuts frame presents a hierarchy tree with all the current persistent cutting planes and their associated blocks.

In the example shown in the figure above, there are two "cut definitions" called Store-Y-Cut and Store-X-Cut. The cut definition Store-Y-Cut has one associated "cut" that slices through the block named "background". On the other hand, the cut definition Store-X-Cut has two associated cuts that slice through the blocks named "background" and "sphere". Note that you can can select cut definitions and their associated cuts from this list to be operated on.

Display

The Display frame provides standard tools for choosing the cutting Style (Cells, Crinkle, or Flat) as well as the display attributes (Shrink Factor, Transparency, Fill and Lines) of the persistent cutting plane being defined. The different cutting styles and display attributes are described in detail in the Examine, Cutting and View, Attributes, Display sections respectively.

Each "cut definition" (i.e. Store-Y-Cut and Store-X-Cut in the image above) can have its own display attributes. When a block is added to a cut definition (for example "background" is added to Store-Y-Cut), the resulting new cut inherits the display attributes of its associated cut definition. That being said, note that the display attributes of individual cuts can be changed at any time.

Options

The Options frame provides tools that will allow you to further edit the definition of the selected persistent cutting plane. Use Remove Block Cut to disassociate the selected block(s) from the cut(s) definition. Edit Cut Definition, will open up the Cut Definition panel. All the functions in this panel are described in detail in the Cut Planes section. Last but not least, Delete Cut Definition will allow you to delete the selected persistent cutting plane.

Overset

The Overset frame contains all the tools needed to control the visibility of the overset data in the persistent cutting plane being defined. This frame and all its options will be visible only if any of the selected blocks contains overset data.

In particular, the Show Fringe/Donors frame contains several options allowing you to control the visibility of fringes objects and their donors:

Type Description
Off Fringes/Donors are not rendered.
Fringe Only Fringes are rendered, but donors are not rendered.
Fringe Donors Fringes and Fringe Donors are rendered.

The tools in the Show frame allow you to further customize the visibility of the overset objects:

Type Description
Hole Grid Show cells removed by the hole cutter during overset grid assembly.
Hole Symbol Show a hole symbol to represent cells removed by the hole cutter during overset grid assembly.
Orphan Show orphan elements. Orphans are fringes which do not have a suitable donor.
Orphan Donor Candidates Show orphan donor candidates.

Visibility

The tools in this frame are similar to those found in the Layers manager. The operation commands are logically grouped based on the number of persistent cutting planes selected. Use On, Off and Toggle with one or more planes selected to change their status as indicated. Finally, the last three commands, All On, All Off and Toggle All, all operate on the entire list of persistent cutting planes regardless of the current selection. As noted in the frame title, actions taken within the Visibility frame cannot be undone.

Demonstration