Field-driven design#
A field is a value that changes from point to point: a stiffness, a color, a wall thickness. In OpenVCAD fields are attributes, so the same field can grade a part’s material or drive a geometric size. These guides cover how to grade material, where field values can come from, and what happens when fields overlap.
Guide |
Focus |
|---|---|
Linear, nonlinear, periodic, and distance-based gradients of scalars, colors, and volume fractions |
|
Build one field and use it for both material grading and geometric sizes |
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The expression syntax used by attributes and other nodes that accept spatial formulas |
|
Write attributes as small compiled Python functions instead of expression strings |
|
Decide which value wins where parts with different attributes overlap |
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Load sampled volumetric data, such as medical images, as a field on ordinary geometry |
|
Bring a finite-element result back into OpenVCAD and grade material from it |
Start with Functional grading. The other guides can be read in any order.