Collision Detection

Colliding Parts are marked

The Collision Detection checks, if any two or more parts in the project touch each other. If a collision is detected, the colliding sections of the parts are marked yellow. The function can be accessed in the toolbar, in the Edit menu or by pressing Ctrl+K. Users can choose a tolerance of 1mm or 2.5mm, defining the raster size. netfabb divides the whole three-dimensional space in raster cells of that size. Each raster occupied by more than one part is then marked yellow. Thus, with a tolerance of 2.5mm, parts with a distance of up to 2.5mm may be marked as colliding. However, while a bigger raster makes the collision detection less precise, it saves calculation time.

Choose a tolerance of 1mm or 2.5mm.

Collisions are marked yellow

Zoom in to view the marked raster cells

Professional Tool: Live Collision Detection

If you have acquired the additional Professional tool "Live Collision Detection", you can click on a button in the tabsheet to activate it. netfabb then constantly checks your parts for collisions, which are marked yellow in the screen. The raster size is always 1mm. A new tabsheet appears with all options for the tool.

Operations in the viewing screen, such as the positioning and scaling of parts can be conducted normally. As soon as two parts touch each other, the collision is marked and a large red X is displayed in the tabsheet. As long as there is no collision, a green check is displayed.

The tabsheet for the Live Collision Detection. A collision has been detected.

The tabsheet for the Live Collision Detection. No collision detected.

In the tabsheet you can change all settings for the collision detection and for the positioning of parts.

In the top left, there is a notice if a collision has been detected. To update the collision detection, click on the button in the top right of the tabsheet. This will activate a new calculation and a new highlighting of collisions in the viewing screen.

If you tick the box Auto-update, an update will be performed every time you move of a part. If you tick the box Update drag & drop, a live update is conducted even during the positioning of the part with drag & drop. This helps you to position parts very precisely, but can result in long calculation times when complex parts are handled. The required memory usage is specified at the bottom of the tabsheet. The box Display collisions has to be ticked, if you want collisions to be visualized. Again, you can save processing time by deselecting this box and ticking it only after certain working steps.

To the right of the red X or green check, eight arrow-buttons are available to move selected parts by specific distances to the left, right, up, down, backwards and forwards. When you use these arrows to move parts, netfabb will always move the part along one of the three axes. The axes are assigned to the arrow buttons depending on the current perspective.