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Fabrication overrides

Most of a feature’s shape comes from around it: a channel’s depth from the layer it is drawn on, a corner’s radius from the process forming that layer. An override is a value you set on one child instead, and every override works the same way.

Inheritance and overrides

Every fabrication value is either inherited or the child’s own.

An inherited value tracks where it comes from, so a later change to that layer or process follows through to the child. An overridden value is the child’s own and stays where you put it. Taking one over starts it at the value it replaced, so nothing moves until you edit it. Clearing it returns the value to tracking what it inherits.

A child sitting off the stack has no layer to inherit from, so face, depth and walls have nothing to track there. Overrides already on it stay editable and removable.

See Inspector for the checkbox that switches between the two.

Which children carry overrides

Void compartments, channels and points carry fabrication values of their own. A material compartment carries none — untouched slab has no face, no depth and no walls to state.

Face, depth and walls

These three inherit from the layer.

Face picks which side of the slab the feature is formed from. It is set on the child as a whole, since every part of one child opens from one side.

Depth is in micrometres, measured in from that face. It is what makes a chamber deeper than the channels running into it, or a pocket a step in that chamber’s floor.

Walls is the wall profile: Vertical, Fillet with a radius, or Draft with an angle in degrees. The kind and its parameter are overridden independently, and only Fillet and Draft have a parameter to set. Leaving that parameter unset means the process’s forming default, and it follows a later process edit instead of freezing at the number that was there when you chose the kind.

A wall kind the layer’s process cannot form is not refused. The geometry builds and the Problems section reports it.

Corner radii

A drawn corner is infinitely sharp and no instrument cuts one, so every in-plane corner is formed at some radius. Radii come in two classes: inner, at a corner of the void, and outer, at a corner of the material. Which class a corner takes follows from its own shape: the outside of a bend is one, the inside is the other. You set the pair rather than picking a class.

Corner radii inherit from the process rather than from the layer. Two authored tiers sit under that base:

  • the element tier — a channel, a region or a point;
  • the vertex tier — a channel’s interior vertex or a region’s ring vertex, overriding its element’s.

The inner and outer radii are independent. Override the inner one and the outer goes on tracking the process.

A region ring vertex is exactly one corner, so it authors one radius rather than a pair, in whichever class that corner takes. Drag the vertex from convex to reflex and the value follows it into the other class. A channel’s interior vertex and a point each form corners of both classes, so each authors the pair.

A channel end carries no corner radii of its own: its corners belong to the point it connects to, so a junction’s corners are authored once rather than once on every channel arriving there.

See also