Version 14.

0 - Tutorial
 Materialise 3-matic 14.0 – Tutorial – L-100179-01

Content
Content .......................................................................................................................... 1
/ General introduction ......................................................................................... 4
Interface ........................................................................................................................ 5
Object Tree and entities................................................................................................. 5
Video tutorials 3-matic ................................................................................................... 6
Scripting ........................................................................................................................ 7
/ Chapter 1: Import/Export .................................................................................. 8
Exercise 1. Import STLs ................................................................................................ 8
Exercise 2. Import a Mimics project file .......................................................................... 9
Exercise 3. Import a CAD file of a heart valve ................................................................ 9
Exercise 4: Import and clean-up of cushion panel file ...................................................10
Introduction to the point cloud functionality .............................................................................. 10
Task 1: Point cloud meshing .................................................................................................... 10
Task 2: Scan fixing ................................................................................................................... 11
Exercise 5: Export 3D PDF ...........................................................................................12
/ Chapter 2: Basic .............................................................................................. 15
Exercise 1: Align the heart valve with the aorta.............................................................15
/ Chapter 3: Analyze .......................................................................................... 17
Exercise 1. Wall Thickness Analysis .............................................................................17
Exercise 2. Curvature Analysis .....................................................................................19
Exercise 3. Part Comparison Analysis ..........................................................................20
Exercise 4. Measure and analyze using fitted primitives ...............................................22
/ Chapter 4: Design ............................................................................................ 25
Exercise 1. Give the aorta a thickness for additive manufacturing ................................25
Exercise 2. Aneurysm design .......................................................................................26
Exercise 3. Designing an acetabular cup ......................................................................27
Exercise 4: Creating a Custom Cardiovascular Benchtop Model ..................................36
Task 1. Clean and Optimize the Geometry .............................................................................. 37
Task 2. Add a Thickness and Trim the Model .......................................................................... 37
Task 3. Design Base and Supports .......................................................................................... 38
Task 4. Add a flange to the benchtop model ............................................................................ 42
Task 5. Apply Finishing Touches and Export ........................................................................... 43
Exercise 5. Design of a patient-specific cranial plate ....................................................45
Task 1. Indicate the outline of the gap ...................................................................................... 46
Task 2. Mirror the healthy geometry and create a guiding line ................................................ 48
Task 3. Creation of the cranial plate ......................................................................................... 52
Task 4. Removing the undercuts .............................................................................................. 55
Task 5. Creating a smooth edge and chamfered edge ............................................................ 56
Task 6. Creating suture holes ................................................................................................... 57
Exercise 6: Design changes and labeling on a bottle ....................................................59
Task 1: Creating a sketch and adding design changes ............................................................ 59
Task 2: Converting the 2D sketch design to a 3D part ............................................................. 64
Task 3: Labeling ....................................................................................................................... 65
Exercise 7: Cooling channel design on a mold..............................................................68
Task 1: Creating a hollow part .................................................................................................. 68
Task 2: Creation of centerline curves ....................................................................................... 69
Task 3: Distance to curve check ............................................................................................... 71
Task 4: Creating a cooling channel .......................................................................................... 72
/ Chapter 5: Remesh .......................................................................................... 74
Basic explanation of the finite element method .............................................................74
Element quality .............................................................................................................74
Typical Remesh workflow .............................................................................................75
Tips and tricks ..............................................................................................................76

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Exercise 1. Introduction to the workflow ........................................................................76

Task 1. Import and visualize the mesh ..................................................................................... 76
Task 2. Reduce the details of the anatomical part ................................................................... 77
Task 3. Remesh the surface elements ..................................................................................... 77
Task 4. Generate the volume mesh ......................................................................................... 78
Task 5. Material assignment ..................................................................................................... 79
Exercise 2. Inspect mesh quality...................................................................................84
Task 1. Inspect the quality of the surface mesh ....................................................................... 84
Task 2. Remesh the surface elements ..................................................................................... 85
Task 3. Further improve the mesh by Smoothing .................................................................... 86
Task 4. Generate a Tet10 volume mesh .................................................................................. 87
Task 5. Inspect the quality of the volume mesh ....................................................................... 88
Exercise 3. Local mesh refinement ...............................................................................89
Task 1. Surface refinement ...................................................................................................... 89
Task 2. Volume refinement ....................................................................................................... 91
Exercise 4. Gradient Remesh .......................................................................................92
Exercise 5. Creating a Midplane mesh .........................................................................93
Non-manifold Assembly ................................................................................................96
Exercise 6. Creating Non-manifold Assembly for anatomical parts ...............................97
Task 1. Generate Non-manifold Assembly in Mimics ............................................................... 97
Task 2. Reduce details and Remesh the surface elements ..................................................... 98
Task 3. Create volume mesh .................................................................................................. 100
Task 4. Material assignment ................................................................................................... 100
Exercise 7. Creating Non-manifold Assembly for intersecting parts ............................103
Exercise 8. Creating a Non-manifold Assembly with a grid .........................................106
Task 1. Creating the non-manifold assembly ......................................................................... 106
Task 2. Reducing the number of triangles .............................................................................. 107
Exercise 9. Improving the accuracy of the grid-based method ....................................110
Task 1. Creating the non-manifold assembly ......................................................................... 110
Task 2. Improving the accuracy of the screw ......................................................................... 111
Task 3. Dealing with intersecting triangles ............................................................................. 111
Task 4. Improving the mesh ................................................................................................... 113
Task 5. Creating volume mesh and identifying bad volume elements ................................... 114
Exercise 10. Exporting and importing the mesh into a solver program ........................117
Task 1. Generating a mesh with material properties .............................................................. 117
Task 2. Exporting the mesh to ANSYS® Workbench™ ........................................................... 120
Exporting a file to ANSYS® Workbench™ version 14.0 or earlier ............................................ 123
Exporting a file to ABAQUS/CAETM ........................................................................................ 124
Exporting a file to COMSOL Multiphysics® ............................................................................. 125
Exporting a file to MSC Patran®.............................................................................................. 125
/ Chapter 6: Texturing ..................................................................................... 127
Introduction to the Texturing module...........................................................................127
Exercise 1: Applying a texture on a pedal. ..................................................................127
Task 1: Creating UV Map ....................................................................................................... 127
Task 2: Creating a 2D texture ................................................................................................. 128
Task 3: Converting the 2D texture to a 3D texture ................................................................. 131
/ Chapter 7: Topology optimization ............................................................... 133
Exercise 1: Import and clean-up of raw data ...............................................................133
Task 1: Surface manipulation of raw topology data ............................................................... 133
Task 2: Redesign and export of CAD-like entities .................................................................. 137
/ Chapter 8: Lattice .......................................................................................... 139
Exercise 1: Creating a porous bone prosthesis ...........................................................139
Task 1: Prepare femur prosthesis .......................................................................................... 139
Task 2: Create porous structure ............................................................................................. 141
Task 3: Finish design and assign thickness ........................................................................... 142
Exercise 2: Design of a filter using lattice structures ...................................................145

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Task 1: Creating a quad based lattice .................................................................................... 146

Task 2: Creating a unit cell based lattice ................................................................................ 148
Task 3: Make graph connections ............................................................................................ 148
Task 4: Assign graph properties ............................................................................................. 150
Task 5: Create mesh from graphs (Optional) ......................................................................... 152
/ Chapter 9: Reverse Engineering .................................................................. 153
Exercise 1: Anatomical Reverse Engineering .............................................................153
Exercise 2: CAD link ...................................................................................................154

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/ General introduction

Materialise 3-matic is unique software that combines CAD tools with pre-processing (meshing)
capabilities. To do so, it works on triangulated (STL) files.

For this reason, it is extremely suitable for organic/freeform 3D data, like the anatomical data coming
from the segmentation of medical images (from Materialise Mimics). We call it Anatomical CAD.
Import your anatomical data in Materialise 3-matic to start doing real Engineering on Anatomy, like
thorough 3D measurements and analyses, design an implant or surgical guide within a research context,
or prepare the mesh for finite element modeling.

Using powerful tools, 3-matic also allows users to perform topology optimization clean up, design and
combine different types of lattice structures, create 3D textures and much more. In a combination with
Materialise build processors, 3-matic gives a possibility to slice even very complex lattice structures by
consuming much less amount of memory. Since Materialise 3-matic can import CAD data, but also do
reverse engineering of anatomical to CAD data, it is perfectly complementary to your CAD package.

NOTICE ON INTENDED USE: Materialise 3-matic is not a medical device.

All datasets used in this tutorial are stored in C:\Program Files\Materialise\3-matic 14.0 (x64)\DemoFiles
or in a similar location, depending on the selected destination folder during installation.

From version 10.0 on, Materialise 3-matic remembers for you. This means that when opening an
operation page, previously remembered parameter values are available for further use. The below
exercises sometimes refer to the default parameter settings. In order to use these default parameter
settings, the functionality Options > Reset Current Operation Defaults can be used.

© 2019 Materialise N.V. All rights reserved.

Materialise, the Materialise logo and the Mimics and 3-matic product names are trademarks of
Materialise NV.

Tutorial Materialise 3-matic 14.0 5/2019, L-100179 Revision 1

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Interface
Open 3-matic to explore its interface.
 The Operations Toolbar (1) contains all the functions to modify the parts in your project.
 The View Toolbar (2) can be used to import, save or change the visualizations of the
models.
 The Object Tree (3) provides a structured overview of the parts that are currently open
in 3-matic.
 The Properties Tab (4) contains three options.
i. Operations: In Operations the parameters for each operation can be filled in.
ii. Macros: A sequence of operations can be recorded in a macro to repeat
multiple parts in a semi-automated way.
iii. Properties: Some statistics of a part, surface, texture or any other entity can be
viewed in the Properties Tab.
iv. Console: The python-like Console makes it possible to quickly execute/test 3-
matic API functions while creating a script.
 Parameters options (5).
i. Expert mode ON – show additional expert options in the operation page. These
options will be highlighted in yellow.
ii. Remember parameters ON – entered and applied parameters (except entities)
in most of operations will be kept when starting the same operation next time.
 Logger (6) shows information of performed actions as well as notifications, warning and
some other additional info.

Object Tree and entities

The Object Tree provides a structured overview of the parts currently open in 3-matic.
 The Section List (1) makes it possible to look inside your design by using a section on
your part. The Position of the section can be changed in the Properties Tab. To hide
one side of your part, activate the Clip function.
 The Metadata (2) makes it possible to store additional text info (Metadata). It might be
filled automatically by some software or edited manually by user
 The Part information (3) can contain multiple entities (Object Coordinate System,
Metadata, Surfaces, Curves, …)

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It is possible to right-click on any level and on any entities in the Part Information. A context menu will
pop up with several operations available.

A similar context menu can be opened in the work area. Left-click on the entity of interest and select it
from the list of entities. Right-click on the selected entity to open the context menu.

Video tutorials 3-matic

There are multiple video tutorials of 3-matic, visualizing the steps in several workflows via a combination
of presentation and demonstration.

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Video tutorials on non-medical applications are accessible via the Materialise Software Academy:
https://www.materialise.com/en/academy/software/

For video tutorials on medical applications, visit our Materialise Medical Academy:
http://www.materialise.com/en/academy/medical/mimics-innovation-suite.

Scripting
3-matic supports Python scripting. The 3-matic Python API makes it possible to script many 3-matic
features. You can write your own Python scripts and call the features from 3-matic. This allows you to
automate your workflows. 3-matic comes with instructions for installing Python and includes a script
editor and a scripting console. More information can be found in the scripting guide. Open 3-matic and
go to Help > Scripting Guide.

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/ Chapter 1: Import/Export
Exercise 1. Import STLs

1. Open a new 3-matic project.

Click on Import Part, select the STLs of the aorta (Aorta1 and Aorta2) and import them
together. During import, Split surfaces with an angle of 45°. This will make separate surfaces
of all inlets and outlets.
They are positioned on the same location since they originate from the same dataset. No
registration is necessary.

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Exercise 2. Import a Mimics project file

1. Open 3-matic. In the File menu, select Import Part and browse to the DemoFiles folder in
the installation folder. The 3D objects are loaded into your 3-matic project.

Exercise 3. Import a CAD file of a heart valve

In case you want to combine the STL model of the aorta with a heart valve design from a CAD package,
you can import the IGES file of this valve. The valve used in this exercise is NOT a real heart valve; it is
redesigned to resemble a common valve.
The IGES file is triangulated upon import.

1. Go to File – Import Part (Ctrl + L) and browse for heart valve.igs file.

2. In the Import dialog, enable Fix normals and Stitch automatic.

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Exercise 4: Import and clean-up of cushion panel file

Introduction to the point cloud functionality

The point cloud functionality makes it possible to modify point clouds in 3-matic and to convert them to
STL files. This includes the import & export of different point cloud formats. Furthermore a range of
tools is available to modify point clouds by marking, sub sampling, noise reduction, splitting… to
improve the quality of the point cloud.

Special tools are available for registration of multiple point clouds or STLs and to glue different
(overlapping) meshes, originating from different point clouds, into one solid mesh.

Task 1: Point cloud meshing

1. Go to File > Import Part > DemoFiles > Cushion_Panel.asc. An import dialog box appears.
The default settings are fine and can be kept. Click OK to import the point cloud. The point
cloud is imported in 3-matic and visualized in the 3D view. The properties of the point cloud
reveal that it consists out of 50474 points.

2. Open the Subsample operation from the Point Cloud toolbar. This operation reduces
the number of points but also optimizes the point distribution. Select the Cushion_Panel as
Entities and set the Reduce point to (%) parameter to 75. The amount of points is reduced
to 36709.

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3. Go to the Point Cloud toolbar and select the Mesh Data operation. This operation will
create an STL mesh from any selected point cloud. Apply it with the default settings. As a
result a part called ‘Cushion_Panel’ will be created. Hide the point cloud by highlighting it in
the object tree and right-clicking on it in order to open the context menu. Select Hide.

Task 2: Scan fixing

Typically, borders in a scanned object will never be smooth and accurate. To reconstruct these features,
3-matic offers different fixing possibilities. In this case the circular holes will be refined with the use of
the slot restoration tool.

1. Go to the Fix toolbar and open the Slot Restoration operation. Select one of the circular
bad contours for the operation. By default, the operation will fit a perfect circle. If desired,
the parameters for this outline can still be changed.
Because the triangles at a border of the scan are typically already noisy and less accurate,
the slot restoration operation offers the possibility to remove these border triangles via the
Expand hole parameter. Set the Hole fill parameters as shown below.

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2. Repeat this operation for the other holes as well. Merge all the created surfaces in order to
get a nice looking result.

Exercise 5: Export 3D PDF

The goal of this exercise is to export a 3D PDF along with measurements, analytical primitives, and
annotations created on the entity. The 3D PDF serves as an effective tool for communication of results
with the surgeon. It is possible to personalize the 3D PDF by including a header, footer, or both.

1. File > Open Project > DemoFiles > Mitral valve.mxp

2. Click on 3D PDF from the Export options under the File menu. Changing the Header and Footer
parameter to Both in the Page Setup section, pens the following operation page.

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3. In the Entities selection box choose all the objects that need to be shown in the exported 3D
PDF from the Object Tree. In this project we would like to show in the 3D PDF the distance
between the Mitral valve and the Papillary muscle of the heart to evaluate the optimal stent size.

The following objects need to be selected as Entities: Mitral valve surface, Mitral valve plane,
Heart, distance measurement and the annotations Mitral valve plane and Papillary muscle.

4. Choose the Output filename and directory by clicking on the path box.

5. Click on Image to choose an image or logo for the Header and Footer and change the
parameters according to the image.

6. Click on Apply.

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7. Open the resulting 3D PDF.

8. In the left panel of the 3D PDF the different views are listed. Click on Detailed View to see the
measurements, annotations and analytical primitives created on the exported entity.

9. When hovering the mouse pointer in the 3D area of the PDF, a toolbar will appear from where
different actions can be performed in the 3D PDF e.g. viewing more details in a cross sectional
view, adding comments, or making measurements in 3D PDF.

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/ Chapter 2: Basic
Exercise 1: Align the heart valve with the aorta
When importing heart valve.igs, the valve will not be positioned correctly yet and needs to be aligned to
the aorta. Use the STL file Aorta1 for this exercise.

1. Go to Align and choose Arc to Arc Align.

2. Fit an Arc on the aorta inlet as the fixed entity. Fit another Arc on the outer surface of the
heart valve as the moving entity. Make sure the arrows are aligned properly, to fit the heart
valve in the right direction.

3. Choose Coincident or Coincident face to face, depending on the direction of the arrows.

4. Use Interactive Translate to fine-tune the positioning if necessary. Select the Object
coordinate system to translate.

Now we need to virtually attach the aorta to the valve. Therefore, we will modify the aorta inlet to fit on
the heart valve.

5. Go to the Fix tab and choose Project Mesh. Select the inlet surface as entity. Method
is On Selection. As target entity select the outer surface of the valve.

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6. Apply and the result should look like this:

7. To open the inlet, delete or hide the surface.

If you want to prepare this assembly for CFD analysis, the valve still needs to be remeshed and the
nodes should match the connecting nodes on the aorta.

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/ Chapter 3: Analyze
Exercise 1. Wall Thickness Analysis
To analyze the thickness of the cortical bone, you can run a wall thickness analysis.

1. Import FinishedFemur.mcs. Make sure only the Cortical part is shown in the Work Area.

In the Analyze tab, click on the Create Wall Thickness Analysis button and select Cortical
as Entity. Set the Maximum Wall Thickness to 10.0 mm. A histogram with the wall thickness
distribution will be displayed and a range of colors will be visualized on the Cortical 3D object.
The green color represents the thinner structures, while the red color corresponds to the thicker
regions. Feel free to play with the slider thresholds for better visualization.

2. Go to the Analyze tab and try to Measure the wall thickness locally.

3. Go to the Export options under the File menu and select Analysis to export the created wall
thickness analysis. Choose the Cortical [Wall Thickness Analysis] from the Object Tree as
Entities and click on Output Directory to choose the folder where the analysis will be
exported. Click apply to export the analysis.

4. The wall thickness analysis results will be saved in a text file on the selected location.

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Exercise 2. Curvature Analysis

For the purpose of guide design, it might be interesting to analyze the curvature of the bone. This
exercise also uses the FinishedFemur.mcs data.

1. Select the Create Curvature Analysis button and select the Femur. Choose Maximum
curvature as Analysis Type, Noisy as Mesh Type and set the Fitting radius to 6.0 mm. Apply
the operation.
A histogram with the curvature distribution is displayed and the 3D object is represented in
a range of colors. The blue color represents the regions with local convexity, while the red
color corresponds to areas of concavity.

2. Try to Measure the Analysis Locally.

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Exercise 3. Part Comparison Analysis

1. Import Aorta1 and Aorta2 from the Demo Files and Split surfaces with 45° (refer to Chapter
1: Import – Exercise 1)

2. Go to the Analyze tab to Create a Part Comparison Analysis to compare the aorta at
systole (Aorta2) with the aorta at diastole (Aorta1).

3. Set the Histogram range from -3 mm to 3 mm.

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4. Try to Measure the Analysis Locally.

5. Select Segmentation under the Analyze menu to segment the analysis results in the
defined range. The following operation will be opened.

6. Choose Entity as Aorta2 [Part Comparison Analysis].

7. Select Histogram range between -3.0000 and 3.0000.

8. Choose other parameters as shown in the image above and press Apply.

9. The surfaces of the object are separated according to the ranges defined during the
Segmentation operation. Use the Show/Hide option to visualize the respective surfaces.

The Segmentation operation can be used in a similar way for segmenting the other analyses.

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Exercise 4. Measure and analyze using fitted primitives

1. Go back to the femur imported for the curvature analysis. Click on the Rectangular
Mark button in the Mark tab and select the femur head of the Femur object. To make sure
that the triangles are marked through the femur head, hold the SHIFT button whilst selecting
the femur head.

2. In the Analyze (or Design) tab, select the Create Analytical Sphere function.

3. Click on Mark > Unmark All.

4. Click on the Rectangular Mark button in the Mark tab and select the femur shaft of the
Femur object. Hold the SHIFT button to mark the triangles through the object.

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5. In the Analyze (or Design) tab, select the Create Line function. Choose the Fit ruled
surface direction as the Method and the marked triangles as Fitting entities.

6. Make the resulting line longer, by using the Edit Axis function in the Analyze or Design
tab.

7. Click on Mark > Unmark All.

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8. Mark the femur neck using the Rectangular Mark tool. Make sure you hold the SHIFT
button when you mark the rectangle in the neck.

9. In the Analyze (or Design) tab, select the Create Line function. Choose the Fit ruled
surface direction as the Method and the marked triangles as Fitting entities. Hide the marked
triangles to visualize the created line.

10. Measure the angle using the Angle measurement from the Measure toolbar. Select the
Line to line Method and indicate the two lines. Click on Apply. Hide the femur first so that
you can select the lines more easily.

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/ Chapter 4: Design
Exercise 1. Give the aorta a thickness for additive manufacturing
1. Import Aorta1 from Demo Files into 3-matic with Split Surfaces checked ON (45°).

2. Separate the inlet and outlet surfaces to another part, so the aorta only consists of the outer
surface. Select in the object tree all the surfaces which needs to be separate and right-click
on them to create a new part.

3. Select the (Uniform) Offset from the Design toolbar. Select the Aorta part as entity and
select Solid. A thickness of 1 mm is good for building. The picture is an example of this
aorta built on an Objet machine.

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Exercise 2. Aneurysm design

To investigate the influence of aortic aneurysms with different sizes and shapes on blood flow or
pressure, it can be interesting to be able to ‘design’ different aneurysms.

1. Import Aorta2 from Demo Files. Go to the Finish tab and select Push and Pull. Set the
Push and pull distance to 5.0 mm and the Morphing diameter to 40.0 mm. Hold CTRL to
pull on a part of the surface of the descending aorta. Rotate the aorta to pull on all sides.

Here you see an example of a CFD analysis of blood pressure on a similar aorta:

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Exercise 3. Designing an acetabular cup

In this exercise we will use forward engineering to design a customized acetabular implant, using patient
data. This way, it is possible to create a prosthesis based on the anatomy which can be used in your
R&D process. In the image below you see an example of such an implant. In this exercise, we will only
design one flange, but of course, the method can be copied for the other flanges.

1. Import FinishedFemur.mcs (refer to Chapter 1: Import – Exercise 2)

2. First, we will make a copy of the pelvic bone, therefore select the Pelvis in the Object Tree,
right-click and from the context menu select Duplicate. To make any of the original 3D
models invisible, right-click and select Hide from the context menu.

3. We will now simplify the Pelvis_duplicate. Select the Create Curve function in the
Curve tab, choose as Curve creation method the Attached Curve option and enable Split
surfaces. Now draw a curve over the contour of the acetabulum.

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4. Select the inscribed surface and select Delete from the context menu. If it is not possible to
select the surface, make sure the curve is closed (Curve > Close Curve) and use Curve >
Split Surfaces by Curves to separate the surface first.

5. From the Design tab, select the Surface Construction tool. Create a surface based
on the created curve.

6. We will use the Analytical Sphere we have fitted onto the femur head during the
Analyze exercise (Chapter 3 Exercise 4), as a start for the design of the acetabular cup. In
the Design tab, click on the Convert Analytical Primitive to Part button and select your
sphere.

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7. To give the sphere a thickness, go to the Design tab and click on the Hollow button.
Fill in the parameters as indicated below and click on Apply.

8. To cut the hollow sphere we will create a plane. In the Design (or Analyze) tab, select
the Create Datum Plane button. Select Fit plane and select the created surface in the
Pelvis_duplicate as Fitting Entity.

9. You can still adjust the position of the Datum Plane. In the Align tab, select the
Translate/Rotate, choose the Object coordinate system and reposition the plane to the
borders of the acetabular cavity. Make sure the plane does not intersect with the edges of
the acetabulum.

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10. Cut the hollow sphere with the Datum Plane and delete the outside part. This finishes
the design of the acetabular cup. In the next steps, we will add a flange to the design.

11. From the Sketch menu select New Sketch. Select Fit Plane as Method and as Fitting
Entity, select the flat surface of the sphere that resulted from the Cut operation.

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12. Import the outline of the pelvic bone into the sketch and project the contours of the
acetabular cup onto the Sketch. Go to Sketch > Import > Import References, for Projection
select both the Contours from the sphere, and for Outline select the duplicated pelvis.
Switch to the sketch work area to get a better view of the sketch.

13. Create a line sequence on the ischium bone. Click on the Create Line action button
in the Sketch tab and select Line sequence. Draw three line segments and press the Escape
key to finish.

14. Add constraints to the line segments. Select the two opposite line segments and click
on the Parallel button.

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15. Set a distance of 7.0 mm between the two parallel line segments.

16. Set a length of 15.0 mm for each of the two parallel line segments.

17. Select the Sketch > Add Sketch Entity > Circle Arc (3 Points). Indicate the
extremities of the line segments and the radius of the arc.

18. Make sure each of the line segments is tangent to the arc. Select one of the parallel
line segment and the circle arc, then select Sketch > Add Constraint > Tangent.

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19. We will now project the 2D flange onto the 3D surfaces. From the Curve tab select
the Project Curve tool. The Entity will be the Sketch-001 and the Target Entity will be the
Pelvis_duplicate 3D object.
We will project according to the normal of the sketch. Highlight the direction parameter, then
expand the sketch, expand the Object Coordinate System and select the Z-axis of the
Sketch. If in the preview, the direction arrows are pointing away from the pelvis, flip the
direction by clicking on the toggle direction button. Ensure to check ON the ‘Create surface
sets’ checkbox. Click on Apply to finish the operation.

20. Merge the surfaces resulting from the projection and separate a copy of the surface to a
new part. Rename it to Flange.

NOTE: The different surfaces are easily selectable as they are separated in a surface set.

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21. Move the surface (Design > Move Surface) of the Flange object over 1.0 mm to give
it a thickness.

22. To attach the flange to the acetabular cup select the Local Boolean operation from
the Design tab. Select the flange as Entity 1 and the outer surface of the sphere as Entity
2. Using the default Local Boolean Parameters the acetabular cup and the flange will be
united.

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23. We will use a predefined screw to create the fixation holes. Go to File – Import Part and
choose STL. Select screw.stl.

24. From the Align tab select Interactive Positioning. In the Work Area select the screw as
Active object and for the Coordinate system, select the Object coordinate system. You can
now drag the screw over the surface of the flange. To create multiple holes, duplicate the
screw and use the Interactive Positioning tool to position them.

25. To subtract the screws from the flange, go to the Design tab and select Boolean
Subtraction. Select the Sphere with thickness as Entity and the screws as Subtraction
Entities. Click on Apply.

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Exercise 4: Creating a Custom Cardiovascular Benchtop Model

One growing application in the cardiovascular market is the ability to design and print a benchtop model.
Benchtop models are helpful for many applications including stent placement research and flow studies.
The following exercise will explain the steps necessary to create such a model and is summarized in
the table below.

Task Description Illustration 3-matic functionality

1&2 Prepare model Local smoothing

Hollow

Trim

3. Design base and Sketch

support Extrude

Create Cylinder

Local Boolean

4. Add flange to the Import

benchtop model
Arc to Arc Align

Interactive Translate
Loft

5. Finishing touches Quick Label

Fillet

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Task 1. Clean and Optimize the Geometry

1. Import the AAA.stl file into 3-matic by clicking File  Import Part. The file is located in the
DemoFiles folder.

2. Smooth any rough areas on the surface of the model using the Local Smoothing tool found
under the Finish Menu. Click and drag to apply the Local Smoothing.

Task 2. Add a Thickness and Trim the Model

1. Create a shelled structure using the Hollow operation found under the Design Menu. The
vessel wall will be created at 2 mm thick. Press Apply to create the Hollow.

2. Use the Trim tool (Finish menu) to cut the ends off of the inlets and outlets of the aorta.
Create a box around the ends of the inlets and outlets and press apply to perform the Trim
Repeat this action for all the remaining in- and outlets.

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Task 3. Design Base and Supports

1. Create a New Sketch, found under the Sketch tab, using the ‘Through 1 point, parallel to
a plane’ method. The ‘Through 1 point, parallel to a plan’ option is found under the Method tab.
As the parallel plane, select the ZX-plane of the world coordinate system. Choose a point on
the posterior side of the aneurysm.

2. Translate this sketch normal to the Y-axis using the Translate function under the Align Tab.
Move the sketching plane 30 mm so it is not intersecting the anatomy at any point.

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3. Use Import References under the Sketch tab to Import the outline of the aorta onto the
sketch. This will serve as a guide to draw the profile of the base.

4. Using Create Line Sequence in the Sketch toolbar, draw a profile of the base in the Sketch
tab. Feel free to be creative, but be sure that it completely contains the aorta profile within the
base.

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5. To give the base thickness, Extrude the sketch in both directions 3 mm (Design menu).
The result should then have a 6 mm thick base. Hide the Sketch afterward.

6. Now, supports will be designed to attach the base to the aorta by creating and attaching
cylinders to the base and aorta (Design  Create Primitive  Create Cylinder). Use the “Expert
Mode” Option (found at the bottom of the 3-matic window) Extend Length to extend the cylinders
into the AAA. Use the 2 Points method to create the cylinders with one point on the base and
one point on the AAA model. The Extend Length option is used to extend the length of the
cylinder so that it fully intersects with the AAA model. Press F3 to display the filter options which
show possible point selections.

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7. Perform a Local Boolean operation (in the Design Menu) to join the base and supports.
The first entity will be the extruded supports, and the second will be the top surface of the base.

8. Use a second Local Boolean to join the supports to the model. Here the first entity is the
result of the previous Local Boolean and the second will be the outer surface of the AAA model
(click on the AAA model and choose surface).

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Task 4. Add a flange to the benchtop model

1. Import the flange STL in the project (File  Import Part  Flange). Use the default options
for the import and click OK to continue.

2. The flange must be attached to the superior side of the AAA model. To first place the flange
at the right position, Arc to Arc Align from the Align Menu can be used. Select the inner contour
of the superior end of the AAA model for Arc on fixed entity and the inner contour of the flange
(at the side of the thin band) as Arc on moving entity. To position the flange correctly, choose
Method Coincident face to face (the arrows in the arcs will help to verify how the flange will be
positioned). Press Apply.

3. The flange is now placed against the AAA model. To make a nice transition between the
AAA model and the flange, there must be a gap between the two parts to make the connection.

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With Interactive Translate (Align menu – shortcut key: T) the flange can be translated in the Z
direction (use Object coordinate system) for approximately 30 mm.

4. With the Loft operation from the Design Menu the flange can be attached to the AAA model
and will give a smooth result. In the operation page choose Type Loft with thickness using
surface and select the side surfaces of the two parts as entities. Leave the Weight 1 and 2 on
default (exact values can be different depending on the distance between the flange and model)
and select the option Merge.

Task 5. Apply Finishing Touches and Export

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1. Put a logo on the top of the vessel using Quick Label in the Finish Menu. Choose method
Drawing and Import DXF file ‘Logo_Materialise.dxf’. Adjust the scale so that the logo fits on the
vessel. Choose a Depth of 1 mm.

2. Use the Fillet tool under the Finish menu to smooth the upper contour of the base. Use a
radius of 1 mm.

3. Add any other finishing touches to the part including final Local Smoothing, found under the
Finish tab.

4. Export the model as STL file (File  Export  STL).

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Exercise 5. Design of a patient-specific cranial plate

This exercise explains how to create a patient-specific cranial plate in Materialise 3-matic and involves
6 main steps, as outlined in the table below.

Task Description Illustration 3-matic functionality

1 Prepare the skull model and Create Curve

define the outline of the gap

Create Curvature
Analysis

Edit Curve (optional)

2 Mirror the healthy geometry to Sketch

create a guiding curve (optional)
Mirror
Translate/Rotate

Interactive Translate

Interactive Rotate

Create Spline

3 Create the cranial plate with a Surface Construction

variable thickness
Variable Offset
Uniform Offset

Boolean Subtraction

4 Remove undercuts Undercut Removal

5 Finish the cranial plate by Smooth Edge

smoothing and chamfering the
edges
Chamfer Edge

6 Create suture holes Create Cylinder

Create Isocurves

Create UV map

UV Based
Rectangular Pattern

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Task 1. Indicate the outline of the gap

Before creating the outline for the cranial plate, the skull first needs to be smooth enough. A Wrap and
Smooth operation (Fix toolbar) will take care of that. A Reduce operation will be applied first, to reduce
the number of triangles, making the model easier to work with.

1. Open the Project skull.mxp.

2. Reduce (Fix menu) the number of triangles. Apply the default settings of the Reduce
feature. To visualize the triangles, the View > Shading Modes functionality can be used
(SHIFT + F3 to quickly enable the triangle edges).

3. Smooth the skull with default parameters (Fix menu).

4. Wrap the skull with the settings shown below (Fix menu):

Now, the outline of the gap needs to be indicated. By doing this, we can use this outline in a further
stage to fill the gap using the Surface Construction operation in the Design menu (or the Create
Cranioplasty Prosthesis in the Plate menu). Curve operations will be used to trace the outline.

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5. Select the Create Curve operation in the Curve toolbar and make sure you select the Curve
creation method as Smooth curve, as shown in the figure below. Check the boxes for Attract
curve and Attach curve. Create a curve around the gap on the wrapped skull.
It is important to define the curve close to the defect, but in a low curvature area, so that
tangency is maintained between the skull and the implant.

Note:
To get a good curve, place the points close enough to each other in high curvature areas.

6. To assist with identifying areas of high tangency, the Analyze  Create Curvature Analysis
tool can be used. This will project a colour map of the surface curvature on the skull model. This
colour map can be adjusted by adapting the values of the histogram range.

The analysis can be hidden via the context menu of the analysis in the Object Tree.

7. The curve can be closed with the Close Curve Operation if the curve is not yet closed
(can be checked in Properties).

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8. When the curve is not completely according to expectations, the Edit Curve tool can be
used.

Click on a point on the curve you want to move, a green dot appears. Now you can adjust the
influence distance to limit the area in which the curve can be moved. Now, drag the green
point to the new location and choose Apply to finish the editing operation.

Task 2. Mirror the healthy geometry and create a guiding line

This step is an optional step in the creation of the cranial plate. Guiding lines can be used for the surface
construction operation to “guide” the new surface. This allows you to create a prosthesis that fits
perfectly in the skull and results in a smooth skull-prosthesis transition.

1. First a sketch will be positioned within the sagittal plane. In the Sketch toolbar, select the
New Sketch operation. Select the Midplane Method and indicate two anatomical landmark
points, such that the sketch will be positioned in the sagittal plane.

Rename the Sketch to ‘Sketch_Sagittal’. The size of the sketch can be adjusted in the
properties by changing the parameters Cell size and Cells count (e.g.100).

2. Use Translate/Rotate (shortcut: G) where necessary to adjust the positioning.

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The standard views like front, left and top can be useful during the positioning of the plane.

These views can be found in the left toolbar

3. Create a mirrored copy of the anatomy using Align  Mirror and use the created sketch as
Mirror plane. Make sure the option Copy is checked ON.

Rename the mirrored part to ‘Skull_Mirrored’

4. Use Translate/Rotate to fine tune the position of the reference (mirrored) skull.

5. Duplicate ‘Sketch_Sagittal’ and rename the entity to ‘Sketch_Coronal’.

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Rotate the Sketch plane 90°, using Align  Interactive Rotate, such that it is positioned directly
within the defect (and becomes a coronal plane). Tick the Enable snapping checkbox to have
the plane rotating in steps of 90°.

6. Move the rotated plane so that the plane vertically divides the defect in roughly two equal
parts.

7. Import information on the skull, defect curve, and mirror anatomy into the sketch. Go to
Sketch  Import References and use Sketch_Coronal as selection entity and to load the
Skull_wrapped and the Skull_Mirrored as intersection entities. Redo the operation with the
defect curve as intersection entities.

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The points indicating the intersection of the sketch with the defect curve will serve as the starting
and ending points for the guiding curve.

8. Use Sketch  Create Spline to sketch out a guiding line. The goal is to match the mirrored
skull as closely as possible and use the imported points as beginning and ending points.

To improve the shape of the spline, select the Sketch toolbar and use the Select and drag operation.

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Task 3. Creation of the cranial plate

1. Select the Design  Surface Construction operation, select the outline curve that was made
in the beginning as Entities and select ‘Sketch_Coronal’ as Guiding lines. Set the Triangulation
to Fine. Select Apply.

If the resulting surface consist of a sharp random triangles, the normal of the outline curve is in
the opposite direction of the surface and should be flipped. First undo the Surface Construction

operation and then select the curve from the Object Tree and click on the tool Flip Curve
from the Curve menu. Afterwards the surface can be constructed and will result in a tangent
surface.

2. When the surface is created, it is part of the skull. In the next step the surface will be moved to
a separate part. This can be done by first selecting the surface in the Work Area and clicking
the right mouse button. A context menu will appear with different options, choose here: Separate
> Move to Part > Create New. After the surface is moved to another part, rename the part to
‘Prosthesis’.

3. The next step is to give a thickness to the surface with the Variable Offset tool from the
Design menu. With this tool, you can locally indicate along the surface contour different values
for the thickness in that area. To know what the thickness should be, measurements can be
performed on the skull like in the example below (use Measure  Distance).

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Choose the parameters from the screenshot below for the Variable Offset operation. To add
contour points to set a different local thickness, select the Points field. Now in the Work Area, a
point can be placed on the contour of the surface and a local thickness can be given. Click on
Add, to add the point to the Overview list and repeat this for all the other points.

The result after this operation can be most easily visualized when the Skull and the Prosthesis
are clipped. This can be done by selecting the Standard Section – Y in the Section List in the
Object Tree. Check on Clip in the properties page and change the Position to get the right view.
Disable the clipping before continuing with the next steps.

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4. The resulting prosthesis is not final yet, as it still intersects with the skull and does not fit well
onto the defect area. To solve this, the skull needs to be subtracted from the plate. To ensure a
smooth fit, a clearance of 0.1 mm is added in this subtraction too. This can be done either
manually with the offset workflow below or via the Clearance factor in Boolean Subtraction.

Open the tool Uniform Offset from the Design Menu. Select the Skull_wrapped as the
entity and choose a 0.1 mm external offset. After the operation, rename the part as Skull_Offset.
If redundant shells are present after the offset, these should be removed before continuing. This
can be done by selecting the skull with Shell from the Mark menu, followed by Invert to highlight
the other shells. Press delete to get rid of the marked loose pieces.

For the subtraction of the skull from the prosthesis, open the tool Boolean Subtraction in
the Design menu. Choose as Entity the Prosthesis and as Subtraction Entity the Skull_Offset.

Note: After the subtraction, it is possible that the prosthesis has loose pieces. These can also
be removed by the previously explained steps Mark > Shell  Mark > Invert  Delete.

>
After creating the prosthesis, post-processing can be done to further improve the design of the
prosthesis. Four possibilities are discussed in the following sections:

1. When a prosthesis with a large thickness is created (e.g. if a ceramic material will be used) then
the created prosthesis will have some ‘undercuts’, that block a good fitting of the prosthesis.

2. Smoothing the edge to create a smooth contour around the cranial plate surface.

3. Adding a chamfer to the edge to create a smooth bevel around the cranial plate contours.

4. Creating suture holes to allow stitching soft tissues to the implant.

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Task 4. Removing the undercuts

The fitting direction of the prosthesis is defined as the direction in which the prosthesis should be taken
in or out. Depending on this direction, the exact area of blocking material (undercuts) is determined.
This direction can be any direction, depending on the preferences of the user. In this case, we will use
a direction that corresponds with the average normal direction of the prosthesis. To obtain this average
normal direction, the surface normal of the upper surface will be selected.

1. Apply the Remove Undercut operation from the Finish menu to remove obstructing material.
The Direction will be the surface normal of the upper surface. This can be selected in the 3D
view by clicking on the surface, while the Direction parameter in the operation page is
highlighted. Select the following parameters and select Apply.

2. The result of the Remove Undercut operation has multiple surfaces on the side surface.
These can be merged by selecting the different surfaces in the Object Tree or Work Area
and choosing Merge in the context menu. Only select the side surfaces as shown on the
picture below and not the top and bottom surfaces to ensure those contours are still
available for further finishing.

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Task 5. Creating a smooth edge and chamfered edge

The Smooth and Chamfer Edge operations are found in the Finish toolbar

1. Select Smooth Edge. Select the contour of the cranial plate you want to smoothen.
Choose the Influence distance, which will be displayed by a green curve around the contour.
Apply the Smooth detail: the more detail, the finer the result, but the longer calculations will
take.

The resulting contour is smoother:

2. Select the Chamfer Edge tool. Choose the outer contour of the bottom surface of the
prosthesis. Choose a chamfering distance and apply the operation. This results in a smooth
bevel around the bottom contour as shown in the picture below:

The result can be fine-tuned by using the Trim and Local Smoothing tools of the Finish menu.

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Task 6. Creating suture holes

The last step of this exercise shows how to make suture holes that can be used to fix soft tissues to the
prosthesis.

1. First a cylinder needs to be created that will be patterned and subtracted from the
prosthesis to create holes. Go to the Design menu and choose the tool Create Primitive > Create
Cylinder. Select a radius of 1 mm and choose Point 2 such that the length of the cylinder
becomes 14 mm.

In the rest of this task, the UV Map and Texturing modules will be used to pattern copies of the cylinder
across the plate.

2. First, the surface needs to be prepared before the pattern can be placed on the surface.
Use the Create Isocurves tool from the Texturing module. Select the contour of the outer surface
of the plate as Entity. Set the Direction to Inside and the Interval distance to 2 mm. Make sure
Split Surfaces is checked ON. Press Apply.

In order to apply a pattern, a UV map needs to be created first. Go to the UV Map tab and
choose the Create UV Map tool. Select the newly created outer surface as Entity. Note the
naming in your project might be different. Change the XYZ to UV factor to 7 and uncheck the
Launch UV Page parameter.

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3. To pattern the cylinders on the plate, use the UV Based Rectangular Pattern tool under
the Texturing Menu. Select the UV Map from the previous step as first input and the cylinder as
Pattern Entity. Change the Output pattern to Without deformation and the height offset to -11.
Switch the Desired result to Subtract results. Press the Preview button, before pressing Apply,
this is useful to inspect the result.

The preview uses a bounding box as indication where the cylinders will be placed. Make sure
each pattern entity is completely perforating the plate. If this is not the case, change the Height
offset until everything looks fine. Press Apply.

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Exercise 6: Design changes and labeling on a bottle

The unique forward engineering concept of 3-matic is driven by the numerous CAD & sketcher
operations. The possibility of applying these standard ‘CAD’ function directly on mesh data opens
different application areas and shortens design cycles tremendously. Examples of possible design
applications are:
 add rounds or reinforcement structures
 create life-like prototypes by automatically applying a pattern (e.g. logo’s or perforations) on
the design
 split up parts in easy-to-build components for easy finishing and assembling afterwards
 easily add text, labels or even bitmaps (e.g. of logo’s) to a sketch. These are very useful,
intuitive tools for design modifications or part identification.
 apply morphing operations on freeform data for smooth and slight design changes

Task 1: Creating a sketch and adding design changes

1. Go to File > Import > STL > DemoFiles > Bottle.stl. Make sure the Split surfaces checkbox is
unchecked.

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The part is not nicely positioned according to world coordinate center. 3-matic offers the possibility of
calculating point of gravity but also to calculate the inertia axes of a part. By calculating inertia axes,
these can later on be used to position symmetry planes and indicate revolve axes

2. Open the Analyze toolbar and select the Create Line operation. Set the Method to Fit inertia
axes and select the Bottle as Fitting entities. As a result, 3 inertia axes are created and
visualized.

Instead of creating inertia axes, it is also possible to reposition an object’s coordinate system to a
different coordinate system (e.g. based on inertia axes). This can be done via the ‘Update OCS to CS’
operation in the edit menu/toolbar.

The created inertia axes can be used to create a sketch plane positioned as a symmetry plane. The
sketch should therefore be created such that the axes of the sketch will match with the inertia axes.

3. Open the Sketch toolbar and select the New operation. Select the three points of the sketch
as shown in the figure below. Press Apply. A new sketch is now created in the 3D view and the
active scene.

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Point 1

Point 3

Point 2

The intersection lines between the part and the sketch can be created in the sketch, for design
purposes.

4. Open the Sketch toolbar and select the Import References operation. As Selection in the
Intersection box, select the Bottle part. Apply the setting as shown below. Afterwards, open
the Sketch tab next to the Work Area tab.

The intersection line (=context curve) of the bottle is now visible in the sketch.

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Creating a thickness and other design changes can be executed in the sketch. The resulting sketch will
be used for a revolve operation afterwards, to recreate the bottle.

5. Make sure the imported context curves have the construction property OFF. Select the Context
curve in the Active scene. Uncheck the Construction box in the properties page. This because
construction lines are only visible in a sketch, but will be ignored for creating a 3D afterwards.

6. Select the Offset operation in the Sketch toolbar. Select the Context Curve in the Entities
box. Give the bottle an offset of 2mm. Select as Direction internal offset. Uncheck the Remove
original checkbox. Make the Convex corners Type Round.

A revolve operation will rotate the sketch over an angle of 360°. Therefore half of the sketch needs to
be trimmed away

7. Before creating the trim line, click on the Toggle construction by default operation. After
doing this all the sketch design that is done, will receive the property construction, and thus not
used for 3D operation (such as the revolve operation).

8. Select the Create Line operation in the Sketch toolbar. Create a line as shown in the figure
below.

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9. Select the Trim operation in the Sketch toolbar and trim the two curves in the sketch as
shown below.

The next steps (10 - 13) will show how to make a small design change at the bottle.

10. First, disable the Toggle construction by default operation again.

11. Select the Create Circle operation in the Sketch toolbar and create a circle which snaps to
the outer surface of the bottle.

12. In order to create constraints for the circle, start with selecting the circle in the database
tree. All the possible constraints will be highlighted now. Select the Set Radius constraint. Fill in
a Radius of 3 mm and Apply the operation.

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13. Select the Trim operation again in the Sketch toolbar. Trim the lines in the sketch as
shown in the figure below.

To make it an open bottle, the top lines of the bottle need to be cut off. Therefore an extra line will be
created as shown in the next steps (14 - 16).

14. Select the Create Line operating in the Sketch toolbar and create a line which is horizontal.

15. Select the Trim operation in the Sketch toolbar and trim the lines to obtain a result as
shown in the next picture.

Task 2: Converting the 2D sketch design to a 3D part

1. Go back to the Work Area. Highlight the original bottle, right-click and select Hide.

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2. Go to the Design menu and select the Revolve operation. Apply the settings as shown
below. Make sure the Rotation axis Direction is the X-axis of the sketch. Highlight the
Direction parameter and click on the X-axis of the Sketch.

Task 3: Labeling

This part of the exercise will create a label on the surface of the bottle. This label can be created by
yourself in 3-matic or you can import a label (*.dxf). Here we will create our own text label.

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1. Go to the Finish menu and select the Quick Label operation. As Method, select Text. In the
Text field, type in “3-matic”. Set the settings as shown below. Go to the work area and hover to
the desired position on the bottle. Press to apply the label.

2. Alternatively, we can use a drawing to create the label. Go again to the Quick Label
operation and set the Method to Drawing. Highlight the Import DXF file parameter and browse
to the DemoFiles folder. Select Logo_Materialise.dxf. Set the settings as shown below. Go to
the work area and hover to the desired position on the bottle. Press to apply the label.

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Exercise 7: Cooling channel design on a mold

Task 1: Creating a hollow part

1. Go to File > Open Project > DemoFiles > Lion_Cavity.mxp

2. Go to the Design menu and open the Hollow operation to create a new surface at a
certain distance from the input part. This surface can then be used as the base surface, to
freely draw curves on, later on being the centerlines for the cooling channels. Apply settings
as shown below

3. As a result, a new surface is created at a distance of 7mm inside the part. Move this new
surface to a new part, by selecting it in the object tree, right-click and select Separate > Move
to Part > Create new. Hide the original part (Lion Cavity) and rename the newly created part
to ‘Hollow result’.

4. As a result you will now see the hollow part in the 3D view. Any curve drawn on this part, will
be at 7mm distance from the original cavity. These curves can then be the centerlines of the
cooling channels. Creating a cooling channel with a radius of 2mm will then result in having
a perfect distance of 5mm between cooling channel and parting surface.

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You can verify the result as well by showing the Lion Cavity again, and showing as well the ‘Standard
Section – X’ in the database tree.

Task 2: Creation of centerline curves

1. Create a new sketch by selecting the ZX-plane in the object tree, right-click > New > Sketch.

2. Go to the Sketch toolbar and select the Import References operation. Import the
projection of the surface contour of the lion surface (of the original cavity) and import the
outline of the hollow result into the sketch. Go to the sketch scene by clicking on the sketch
tab.

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3. Go to the Sketch toolbar, select the dropdown menu Create Line and click on Line Sequence.
The imported context curves will help you in positioning the lines. Make sure the lines are
wider than the lion.

4. Go back to the Work Area. To project the line sequence that has been on the Hollow
part, go to the Curve toolbar and select the Project Curve operation. Change the settings as
shown below. Make sure the negative Y-direction is indicated as Projection Direction
parameter. Apply the operation and Hide the sketch.

As a result, the sketch curves have been projected on the hollow part and a curve entity is
added in the tree of the Hollow result. It is now still necessary to enlarge the curves at the
end points, so that the curve is coming out of the original Lion Cavity. That will ensure that a
Boolean subtraction operation can be done afterwards.

5. First, hide the surface of the hollow result. Surface List > right-click > Hide in the context menu.

6. Go to the Curve toolbar and select the Enlarge Curve operation. The length of the free
curve that will be added should be 30mm to be certain it is larger than the original Lion Cavity.
Apply the operation.

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7. From the (hidden) Lion Cavity part, select the lion surface in the object tree and Copy it to a
New Part, via the context menu. The new part will have the name Lion Cavity-001, indicating
that it is originating from the Lion Cavity part. It is now visible that the curves are nicely
following the shape of the cavity, at a fixed distance of 7mm.

Task 3: Distance to curve check

The Analyze menu makes it possible to verify the correctness of the created centerlines. A distance-to-
curve analysis can reveal the actual distance between a curve and a part.

1. Go to the Fix toolbar and select the Invert Normal operation. Make sure the Lion Cavity-
001 part is selected to execute this operation. This will invert the orientation of the triangles
of the part Lion Cavity-001 in order to visualize the analysis on the front faces of the triangles.

2. Open the Create Distance-to-Curve Analysis operation from the Analyze toolbar. Apply
the settings as shown below.

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3. As result, the distance between Lion Cavity-001 and the curve is calculated and represented
via a histogram (properties of the created analysis) and accordingly visualized via coloring
the part. In the histogram some statistical information is available as well, informing that the
minimum distance between curve and part is indeed 7mm (due to the ‘discrete’ nature of an
STL, this value will never be perfect 7mm).

Task 4: Creating a cooling channel

1. Open the Circular Sweep operation from the Design toolbar. Select the created
centerline curve as Sweep paths. Make sure the Sweep diameter parameter is set to 4 mm.
As result a new part is created containing the Cooling channel.

2. Show the original Lion Cavity part again and Hide the Lion Cavity-001 part. Make sure the
Bottom surface of the original Lion Cavity part is hidden to see the cooling channels.

3. Go to the Design toolbar and select Boolean Subtraction. Indicate the Lion Cavity and
Cooling Channel-001 part respectively as Entity and Subtraction Entity. The other parameters
can be set as indicated in the screenshot below, and then the operation can be applied. As a
result, the Lion Cavity now has conformal cooling channels added to its geometry.

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/ Chapter 5: Remesh
Remeshing is intended to optimize your models for FEA (Finite Element Analysis) or CFD
(Computational Fluid Dynamics) purposes. In Mimics and 3-matic, all 3D models are made out of
triangulated surfaces. This allows capturing very complex geometrical structures accurately. The
remesh operations enable you to quickly and easily transform badly shaped triangles into more
equilateral triangles. The more geometrically ‘regular’ the triangles are, the more accurate the results of
the FEA/CFD calculations will be.

Basic explanation of the finite element method

The intent of a finite element method is to represent an object with a limited number of elements that
are connected to each other by nodes. This allows approximating the behavior of a complex structure
with a series of partial differential equations, which are numerically solved. For example, it can be used
to calculate mechanical stresses in implants during gait.

The smaller the elements become, the more the method converges to the analytical solution, which is
often too complex to be solved by itself. However, more elements are needed when the element size is
reduced, which makes the calculation more complex and time-intensive. Choosing the correct element
size is thus very important to reduce the complexity of the analyses, but still provide sufficient accuracy
for the application. Typically, a small element size is used for small features and a bigger element size
for regions that are less of interest.

Element quality
The element types that are used in 3-matic are triangle surface elements and tetrahedral volume
elements. The quality of the mesh is assessed by how well the elements resemble equilateral triangles
and tetrahedrons. This quality influences the capability of the solver program to converge to a solution
and affects the accuracy of the numerical simulation. For example: badly shaped elements are more
likely to collapse when one of the nodes is moved, which will give an error in most solver programs and
stop the calculation. Sharp angles, flat angles or a distorted shape are typical indications for a bad
quality element.

The quality of the elements can be inspected in Materialise 3-matic with shape measures related to
triangle properties such as base, length, angle, height, etc. These shape measures indicate how much
the elements resemble an equilateral triangle or tetrahedral element. More information about the shape
measures and their specific values can be found in the Remesh chapter of the reference guide.

Good quality element Bad quality element

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Typical Remesh workflow

1. DICOM (Mimics)
Mimics allows you to segment the anatomy of interest from DICOM images.

2. 3D anatomy (Mimics)
From the segmented DICOM images a 3D part can be generated, which can be exported to 3-
matic for further pre-processing.

3. Smooth anatomy (3-matic)

Often parts contain little details/artefacts that are not needed for the final FEA/CFD
simulation. Representing these details requires a small triangulation, which increases the total
number of nodes. By performing the Smooth or Wrap operations, the geometry & topology of
the part can be simplified. This reduces the total number of triangles needed to represent the
part.

4. Optimized mesh (3-matic)

3-matic contains several tools to optimize the surface element quality:
 Adaptive Remesh: Optimize and locally refine the mesh while preserving detailed features.
 Uniform Remesh: Provides a uniform and high quality surface mesh.

 Gradient Remesh: Improve the growth rate between the elements.

 Quality Preserving Reduce Triangles: Reduce triangles while preserving element quality.

Once you are satisfied with the surface mesh, the “Create Volume Mesh” tool will generate
tetrahedral elements starting from the surface elements.

5. Materials (Mimics)

The volume mesh can be combined with the DICOM images in Mimics. This allows you to
assign realistic material properties to the mesh derived from the CT gray values.

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Tips and tricks

 Always undo the previous remesh, when testing out optimal meshing parameters.

 Before creating a volume mesh, it is a good idea to check for intersecting triangles and bad
contours with the Fix Wizard of the Fix menu. Intersecting triangles and bad contours will not
allow creating a volume mesh.

 Performing a smooth after a remesh operation can further improve the mesh quality.

 When setting a maximum edge length for the Volume it is advised to minimally use an edge
length that is slightly bigger than the surface edge length.

 In the properties of the Volume List, you can change the visualization of the volume elements
to make the edges more visible.

 The Manual Surface Mesh Tools allow you to refine single elements. For most of these tools,
holding Ctrl allows for more user control of the element refinement.

Exercise 1. Introduction to the workflow

This exercise will guide you through a typical FEA workflow, starting from the 3D part in Mimics to a
quality volume mesh with material properties based on the medical images.

Task 1. Import and visualize the mesh

1. Open Mimics. Go to File > Open project and browse to “C:\Program Files\Materialise\3-
matic 14.0 (x64)\DemoFiles” and open Femur.mcs. Copy the 3D object “Yellow2” to your
clipboard.

2. Open 3-matic and press CTRL + V to paste the part into 3-matic.

3. In the Object Tree change the name to “Femur”. Select the femur and go to the Properties
page. This provides information about the number of triangles and nodes (Points).
Optional: change the color of the Front face to a more bone-like color (Red: 255, Green:
240, Blue:206).

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4. Change the view from Smooth Shaded to Filled with Triangle Edges [Shift + F3].

Task 2. Reduce the details of the anatomical part

1. Reduce the amount of detail in the femur. Click on the Smooth button in the Fix tab and
apply the default parameters. Alternatively, the Wrap option in the Fix tab can be used.

A smooth surface makes it easier to represent the geometry with a larger element size, which reduces
the computational cost for the solver program.

Task 3. Remesh the surface elements

1. Optimize the surface elements with the Uniform Remesh tool. Adjust the parameters as
shown below and apply the operation.

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When changing the Target triangle edge length, the logger will provide an estimation of the number of
triangles that will be generated and the memory usage.

Task 4. Generate the volume mesh

1. In the Remesh tab, select the Create Volume Mesh button. To have a uniform mesh
inside the model define the Maximum edge length typically slightly bigger than the maximum
edge length of the surface mesh. For now use 3 mm and Tet4 elements.

Setting a maximum edge length may increase the number of elements, which will cause an increase of
calculation time in the solver program.

2. To visualize the effect of the volume generation go to the Work Area and clip the 3D objects
using the Standard Section – Y as a clipping plane and adjusting its position.

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Task 5. Material assignment

CT scans of bones can be used to assign material properties to the FEA model, since there is usually a
direct relation between the intensity of the images (Hounsfield unit or gray values) and the density of the
bone as depicted in the schematic below. By combining the information of the DICOM images and the
volume mesh an accurate material assignment can be performed in Mimics.

1. In 3-matic, select and copy (Ctrl+C) the volume meshes of the “Femur”. Go back to Mimics,
where the original project was open, and press Ctrl+V to paste the volume meshes. The volume
mesh will appear in the FEA Mesh Project Management tab, on the right-hand side of the Mimics
interface.

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2. With the Materials Tool, under the FEA Mesh Project Management tab, the material
properties (density, Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio) can be assigned. Make sure the
Femur is selected and then click on the Materials tool. The Material Assignment dialogue box
will then pop up.

A gray-value based method will be used for the material assignment. More precisely, two
material types will be defined:

- Material type 1: One material value with a density of 50 kg/m^3 will be used for all negative HU
values until 100 HU. The purpose of this material type is to set a lower limit for the density and
it helps to prevent negative density values.

- Material type 2: Ten materials will be used to cover the trabecular bone and cortical bone range.
Let’s take 50 kg/m^3 and 1900 kg/m^3 as the minimum and maximum density values of the
bone.

For both material types we will use the following Young’s modulus (E) and Poisson ratio (v):
E = 0.004*ρ^2.01 (MPa) and v=0.3.

The Mimics reference guide contains Empirical Expressions for several bone types with references to
the corresponding papers.
(Mimics Menus > FEA > Assign Material> Material Expressions > Empirical expressions)

3. Start by creating an additional tab by pressing on the [+] button next to Material type 1.

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4. For material type 1 use the following settings:

5. For material type 2 use the settings below. Afterwards press “Apply” and “Close” the window.

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6. To inspect the inside of the model use the clipping functionality. Make sure the Texturing
is on None.

7. Finally you can export the mesh with material properties to a solver program. File > Export.

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Exercise 2. Inspect mesh quality

In this exercise you will learn how to inspect the quality of the surface and volume elements. Also, it will
be shown how the Smooth operation can further improve the results of the Adaptive Remesh tool.

1. File > Open Project > DemoFiles > Heart.mxp

2. The Fix Wizard of the Fix menu allows inspecting and solving overlapping and
intersecting triangles, which are often present in thin complex structures. By pressing Follow
advice, the Fix Wizard can solve most problems automatically.

Do not use the Follow advice option when dealing with a Non-manifold Assembly.

Task 1. Inspect the quality of the surface mesh

1. To inspect the properties of the mesh, open an Inspection View by selecting the
object in the Object Tree and clicking on the Inspect Part button in the Remesh tab. With
this view, different quality parameters of the surface mesh can be investigated and
elements with bad quality can easily be located. Note that the values shown in the
screenshots can be different between users.

Shape measure: Way of comparing the shape of the elements with an equilateral triangle
Inspection measure: Inspect a property of the elements e.g. height, edge length, angles, etc.
Growth measure: Inspect the transition from smaller to larger triangles

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2. In the Quality parameters section, adjust the Shape measure to Skewness (N) and in
Histogram parameters make sure that Current measure is set to Shape measure. Adjust
the Maximum number to 0.3, by typing or dragging the green outer edge of the histogram.
The histogram shows that a certain percentage of the triangles have a shape quality lower
than 0.3, in this case 16%. This value can also differ from user to user.

3. To visualize the triangles with a quality lower than the specified threshold, select the Color
low quality triangles checkbox. The colors of the triangles correspond to the colors of the
bars in the histogram.

Task 2. Remesh the surface elements

1. To optimize the surface mesh the Adaptive Remesh is used. Adjust the parameters as
shown below and apply the operation. Check the influence of the Adaptive Remesh
operation on the Inspection page.

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Task 3. Further improve the mesh by Smoothing

1. Go to the Fix menu and select the Smooth tool. Make sure to use the smooth on
separate Surface sets to preserve the edges of the in- and outlets. Go back to the Object
Tree to select the different surfaces or select them in the work area

2. Inspect the effect of the smoothing on the histogram of the Inspection Page.

3. Redo the Adaptive Remesh with same parameters as before to further optimize the
mesh and fix issues that might have occurred in thin regions.

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Task 4. Generate a Tet10 volume mesh

For this example a Tet10 tetrahedron will be created, which has an extra node in the middle of each
connection. Tet10 elements are commonly known as quadratic tetrahedron elements and make it
possible to simulate non-linear element behavior, as shown below.

Tet4 element Tet10 element Non-linear behavior

Non-linear element behavior can provide more realistic results, but is more difficult and computationally
intensive to calculate.

1. Use the Create Volume Mesh tool and select Tet10 as the element type. Afterwards, check
the logger information, it will provide feedback on the quality of the mesh depending on the
values set in the Analyze mesh quality section.

With the expert mode you can project the mid nodes on the original (not remeshed) surface.

Original shape (not remeshed) Tet10 of remeshed shape Tet10 with projected midpoints

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Task 5. Inspect the quality of the volume mesh

1. Open the Analyze Mesh Quality tool in the Remesh menu. This tool allows you to
inspect the quality of the surface and volume mesh.

2. Check the Display the shape measure list checkbox and switch between the solvers to see
the effect of the solver setting. Afterwards you can uncheck the list.

3. For now use Custom as a solver. Press Apply and check the logger information. As you can
see the mesh passed all the criteria.

4. If you want a more detailed overview of a certain shape measure you can plot a histogram.
Check Calculate histogram, put it on Volume and change the Shape measure to Aspect
ratio (A). To find the location of a bad element use the Mark bad elements box. Put the
parameter values as shown below and press Apply. The logger information will display the
mesh statistics and the 3D view will show the triangles that do not reach the shape quality.

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Exercise 3. Local mesh refinement

To reduce the computational cost of running a FE simulation without compromising the quality of the
results, it is often desired to have a large density of elements in a certain area while having a lower
density of elements in other areas.

Task 1. Surface refinement

1. Go to File > Open Project > DemoFiles > Femur.mxp

2. Use the Rectangular Mark tool to select part of the femur head (Mark menu). Make sure to
hold the SHIFT button when making the selection. Create a new surface, as shown below.
Afterwards, do the same for the lower extremity of the femur. Make sure to rename the surfaces,
with an appropriate name.

3. Open the Adaptive Remesh tool and use the Adaptive Remesh parameters as shown below.
For the Local remesh parameters do the following: use the head as the entity and set the
Maximum edge length on 1 mm and use an Influence area of 0 mm, then press Add. Next
remove the head as an entity, by pressing delete, and now select the bottom as the entity. Now
use a Maximum edge length of 2 mm and an Influence area of 0 mm, press Add again. Change
the Growth rate to 10 and press Apply.

The influence area allows you to expand the area, where the defined local Maximum edge length will
be used, with a distance in mm. This is particularly useful when using contours as entities for local
remeshing.

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4. Perform a smooth operation to further optimize the mesh. Go to Fix > Smooth .

You can use a variety of input entities for the local remesh parameters: curves, surfaces, parts, etc.
These entities do not need to belong to your part e.g. using an additional sphere part:

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Task 2. Volume refinement

1. Next, we will create the volume mesh, using the same parameters as for the surface mesh.
Go to Remesh > Create Volume Mesh, the same Local volume mesh parameters as for the
surface mesh will be used.

When using a surface as a local entity, the elements will grow towards the inside with the defined growth
rate. When using a Part as a local entity all the elements inside that part will have the defined local edge
length.
Using a surface Using a part

2. Clip the part to visualize the inside. You can see the volumes are gradually growing from the
surface to the middle.

3. In the properties of the Volume List, you can change the visualization of the volume elements
to make the element edges more visible.

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Exercise 4. Gradient Remesh

The Gradient Remesh tool allows you to create a smooth transition between small and large triangles.
The smooth transition is either based on the area of the triangle (called Area-growth) or on the largest
edge length of the triangle (called Edge-growth). The range of the transition area is based on a ring
definition, which decides which neighboring elements have to be considered to determine the smooth
transition, as illustrated:

1. File > Open Project > DemoFiles > Aorta.mxp

2. Use the Adaptive Remesh to provide the wall with an edge length of 4 mm and the In-outlets
an edge length of 1 mm. Notice the bad growth rate between the wall and the in-outlets.

3. Click on Aorta in the Object Tree and use the Inspect Part tool. In the Quality parameters
set the Growth measure on Edge-growth 3-rings and change the Current measure to Growth
measure in the Histogram parameters. Put the maximum of the histogram on 0.5, we will use
this as a reference.

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4. Open the Remesh > Gradient Remesh tool and use the following parameters to improve
the growth:

Exercise 5. Creating a Midplane mesh

A mid-plane mesh is typically used to represent a solid model by a single surface. To approximate the
volume a thickness property has to be assigned in the solver program. Midplanes are particulary useful

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for representing thin geometries, these would otherwise require a fine mesh to accurately represent
bending behavior.

1. Open Project Aorta_Hollow.mxp from the demo files.

2. Use the right mouse button in the object tree to copy the Outer Wall surface and Inner Wall
surface to a new part. Rename the respective parts as “Outer Wall” and “Inner Wall”.

3. For creating a midplane, go to Remesh menu and select the option Create Midplane.
Select Entity 1 as Outer Wall and Entity 2 as Inner Wall. Click on Apply to perform the
operation. Hide the Outer Wall and Inner Wall to show the created midplane.

4. After the midplane is created, go to Remesh menu and select Adaptive Remesh. Select
Entities as midplane, Target triangle edge length parameter as 1.0 mm and check ON
Preserve surface contours. Click on Apply to perform the operation.

5. To analyze the width of the midplane go to Analyze menu and click Create Midplane
Thickness Analysis. Select Entity as midplane and Limiting Entities as Outer Wall and Inner
Wall. Click on Apply to perform the operation. The histogram result shows that the width of the

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midplane is approximately 1.0 mm. For this part we know the width of the wall was 1 mm, but if
you have a more difficult part with an uneven thickness a similar analysis needs to be performed.

6. Export the surface mesh of this model and assign a thickness of 1 mm in the solver program.

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Non-manifold Assembly
Performing loading simulations on a bone-implant interface is interesting for several reasons, e.g. in
order to check whether the loads are properly transferred from the plate to the bone.

Since non-conforming surfaces generally tend to create high stress concentrations, thus resulting in an
unrealistic loading situation, it is quite important for a Finite Element program that the meshes of both
the plate and the bone have shared nodes at the interface.

Mimics and 3-matic can solve this problem by creating a non-manifold assembly. This tool allows
assembling two or more parts into one combined part, which has a shared surface at the intersecting
regions. Now the parts can be remeshed thereby ensuring a good interface between the parts. The parts
can be split after the remesh, this will create parts that have matching nodes at the interface surfaces.

There are three possibilities that allow generating a non-manifold assembly.

1. Materialise Mimics:
Mimics can convert masks to a 3D non-manifold part. Use this method when there is a mask
of each part available.

2. Materialise 3-matic (Intersection-based):

3-matic can generate a non-manifold part based on a Boolean operation. Use this method
when not all the parts have a mask available and when the parts are intersecting with each
other.

3. Materialise 3-matic (Grid-based):

3-matic can generate a non-manifold similar to Mimics by converting the parts to a specified
grid. Use this method when not all the parts have images available and parts do not have
proper intersections.

Do not use Fix > Fix Wizard for automatic fixing of the non-manifold part. The Wizard will try to fix
features that are typical for a non-manifold assembly. The tool can still be used for diagnostics.

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Exercise 6. Creating Non-manifold Assembly for anatomical parts

In this exercise you will learn how to make an assembly with Mimics. All parts of interest have a
segmented mask and there is no need to add a CAD part, so an assembly with Mimics will be the best
approach.

Task 1. Generate Non-manifold Assembly in Mimics

1. Open project “Spine.mcs” in Mimics (“C:\Program Files\Materialise\3-matic 14.0

(x64)\DemoFiles).

2. Go to the Masks tab under the project management tab, mark the assemblies in the list by
clicking on in the following order L4 > L3 > Disc_L3_L4. The order is important, the first
selected mask will be subtracted from the ones which are selected later.

3. Go to FEA/CFD in the menu and click on Calculate Non-manifold.

4. Use the parameters as shown in the figure below and click on Calculate.

The quality of the resulting mesh is better when using a cube-like matrix, however, this affects the
accuracy of the resulting mesh.

5. Copy the generated assembly of the vertebral column to your clipboard by selecting the
assembly and pressing Ctrl+C. Open 3-matic and paste the part.

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Task 2. Reduce details and Remesh the surface elements

1. After the assembly is present in 3-matic, press [Shift + F3] to visualize the triangulation on the
assembly.

2. Reduce the amount of detail in the vertebral column. Go to Fix menu and select Smooth or
use the shortcut [Alt+S], select Assembly as Entity, use 0.7 as Smooth factor, check OFF the
Perform post processing option and click on Apply.

3. Upon a quick inspection of the properties and mesh quality, the quality seems sufficient
and we only have to reduce the number of triangles. With Inspect Part you can determine the
current edge length and current quality of the triangles: average edge length of 1 mm and quality
over 0.5 for skewness. Note that the values shown in the screenshots can be different between
users.

4. To reduce the triangles of the Assembly while preserving their quality go to Remesh menu
and select Quality Preserving Reduce Triangles. Use the parameters as shown in the image
below and click Apply.

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5. Optional: Use Smooth and Adaptive Remesh operations in sequence to further optimize
the quality of the mesh of the vertebral column. Use the Smooth and Adaptive Remesh
parameters as shown in the images below and click Apply.

When using the Uniform Remesh tool, the smooth curve operation can help to improve the interface
contours. Go to Curve > Smooth Curve, select the bad contours and press Apply.

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Task 3. Create volume mesh

To introduce a slight element growth internally in your model you can use the Local volume mesh
parameters and define only an edge length of 2 mm around the surface.

1. Go to Remesh > Create Volume Mesh, select Assembly as Entity. Select the surfaces of
the assembly as Entities for Local volume mesh parameters. Set the parameters as shown
below, click on Add and then press Apply.

2. Use the Standard section – Y to Clip the volume mesh.

Task 4. Material assignment

1. In 3-matic, select and copy (Ctrl+C) the volume meshes of the “Vertebra”. Go back to Mimics,
where the original project was open, and press Ctrl+V to paste the volume meshes.

2. Rename the sub-volumes to avoid confusion, hide the sub volumes one by one to figure the
order out.

3. Assign the material properties on the subvolumes, with the Assign Material tool.
For the Vertebrae use gray value based method and the following expressions:

ρ = 47 + 1.122* HU [kg/m3]

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E = 0.02 *ρ^1.75 [MPa]

V = 0.3

For the Intermediate Disc use a homogenous material assignment. You do not have to wait for
the histogram to be calculated, since it is only one value.

ρ = 1000 [kg/m3]
E = 4.2 [MPa]
V = 0.45

4. Use clipping to internally inspect the part.

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5. Finally you can export the mesh with material properties to a solver program. Go to File > Export.

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Exercise 7. Creating Non-manifold Assembly for intersecting parts

In this exercise you will learn how to make an assembly with 3-matic. This is an example for when there
are for some parts no images available and they are intersecting or can be easily modified to be
intersecting. For these cases the intersection-based method provides the most accurate results.

1. File > Open Project > DemoFiles > BonePlate.mxp

2. The interface between the bone and the plate can be better visualized by changing the
transparency level of the bone; in order to do this, right-click on the Bone in the Object tree and
choose Transparency  High. Set the transparency for the Plate on medium.

3. You will notice that the plate does not intersect with the bone. To make this intersection use
Move Surface tool in the Design menu. Select the bottom surface of the plate and apply the
following settings. If you do not have the Design menu available you can continue with the
hidden part: Plate_MovedSurface.

4. A recommended step when creating a Non-manifold with this method is to first remesh all
the surfaces with similar parameters. Go to Remesh > Adaptive Remesh and use the following
parameters:

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5. Select the Create Non-manifold Assembly from the Remesh menu. The main entity is the
object whose volume will be reduced with the inserting entities. The volume of the intersecting
entity will be preserved. The order is important, the bottom ones will always be subtracted from
the top entities.

6. Hide the original parts in the object tree.

7. The Create Non-manifold Assembly tool generates different surface sets respectively
corresponding to the main entity (Plate), the intersecting entity (Bone and screws) and the
interface between them. Show/hide each of the surface set separately to see how the Boolean
operation of the non-manifold was performed.

8. Now improve the mesh between the parts with Adaptive Remesh. Use the parameters as
mentioned in the image below. Make sure the expert mode is ON.

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9. The next step is to split the Non-manifold back into separate parts. Use Remesh > Split
Non-manifold Assembly tool and select the assembly as Entity and press Apply.

10. The final step is creating a volume mesh of each part. Go to Remesh > Create Volume
Mesh. Enable the control edge length parameter to use a similar maximum edge length as used
for the surface mesh, 0.5 mm.

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Exercise 8. Creating a Non-manifold Assembly with a grid

In this exercise you will learn how to make an assembly with 3-matic. This is an example for when there
are for some parts no images available and the parts are difficult to modify to be intersecting. For these
cases the grid-based method provides the best results.

Task 1. Creating the non-manifold assembly

1. Open project Composite.mxp from DemoFiles

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2. To create the non-manifold assembly go to Remesh > Create Non-manifold Assembly. For
this porous structure with no proper intersection, it is advised to use the grid-based method. Set
the parameters as shown in the image below.

The smaller the grid size the more accurately the non-manifold will represent the original parts, but this
will increase the computational efforts (see logger information).

Task 2. Reducing the number of triangles

The grid-based method will already provide good quality triangles, but depending on the grid resolution
a high number of triangles can be generated. With 3-matic you can keep a high number of triangles at
the interface contours and reduce the triangles in the other areas.

1. In the object tree, convert the bad contours to curves and group the curves together in a curve
set.

2. Go to Remesh > Adaptive Remesh. Make sure the Expert mode is ON. To reduce the
number of triangles, use the parameters as shown in the image below.

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3. Delete the curve set from the part, this is no longer necessary.

4. Use the Smooth operation on the different surface sets to improve the quality. Go to Fix ->
Smooth and use the parameters as shown in the image below.

5. Go to Remesh > Split Non-manifold Assembly and use the parameters as shown in the
image below.

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Exercise 9. Improving the accuracy of the grid-based method

Conversion to a grid will always cause some geometrical errors. For CAD parts these errors can be
higher than desired. 3-matic can regain accuracy, by projecting the surfaces back on the original mesh.
In this exercise it is shown how you can perfom this projection and how to identify and fix intersecting
triangles caused by the projection.

Task 1. Creating the non-manifold assembly

1. Open Project Trabecular_Screw.mxp from DemoFiles.

2. To create the non-manifold assembly go to Remesh > Create Non-manifold Assembly and
use the parameters as shown in the image below.

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Task 2. Improving the accuracy of the screw

3. Hide the Trabecular surface set and visually compare the original screw with the screw in the
assembly.

4. To improve the accuracy of the screw go to Fix > Project Mesh. For Entities use the screw
surfaces sets of the assembly. For Target entity use the original screw and make sure the
method is On selection.

Task 3. Dealing with intersecting triangles

The projecting step might introduce intersecting triangles. Note that when using a small grid size there
is less chance of intersecting triangles.

1. Use the fix wizard to identify the number of intersecting triangles.

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2. You can single out islands of the intersecting areas to easily identify and fix the intersecting
areas. Make the trabecular surface visible and use the following tools in this order to create
those islands:

a. Fix > Mark Intersecting Triangles or press [Ctrl + Shift + Q] (make sure the non-
manifold assembly part is selected)
b. Mark > Expand > Expand by Number

c. Mark > Invert or press [O]

d. Mark > Make Invisible or press [H]
e. Fix > Mark Intersecting Triangles or press [Ctrl + Shift + Q]

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3. Use the manual surface mesh tools to fix the area.

a. Use Delete Triangle to delete the intersecting triangles. Often some neighboring
triangles have to be removed as well.
b. Use Create Triangle to fill up the hole. Make sure the nodes are properly connected.

4. Mark > Make All Visible

Task 4. Improving the mesh

Triangles of the trabecular structure, which are located at the interface, are elongated with the projection
of the screw. Because the rest of the mesh has still a good quality only this area will be remeshed.

1. Create a curve from all the Bad Contours by [Right Mouse Click] > Separate > Copy to New
Curve. Group all the Curves in a new Curve Set by [Right Mouse Click] > Separate > Move to
New Curve Set

2. Mark > Mark Entities, select the curve set. Press the up arrow or Mark > Expand >
Expand

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3. Use the Adaptive Remesh on the marked areas. Use a Target edge length with a value
slightly smaller than the grid size that was used during the assembly.

4. Right click and Unmark All

5. Delete the Curve Set in the Object tree.

Task 5. Creating volume mesh and identifying bad volume elements

1. Create a volume mesh with the parameters as shown in the image below. Notice in the
logger, there is one bad volume element.

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2. Split the non-manifold assembly with the Automatic volume method.

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Exercise 10. Exporting and importing the mesh into a solver

program

Task 1. Generating a mesh with material properties

1. Open Mimics. Go to File > Open project and browse to the “DemoFiles” folder of 3-matic
and open Femur.mcs. Copy the STLs “Femur” and “Implant” to your clipboard.

2. Open 3-matic and press CTRL + V to paste the parts in 3-matic.

3. Go to Remesh > Create Non-manifold Assembly to create a matching node interface.

4. Use Adaptive Remesh to improve the surface mesh, go to Remesh > Adaptive Remesh.

5. Improve the surface mesh by performing a smooth on each surface separately in order
to keep the surface structure. Go to Fix > Smooth.

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6. Go to Mark > Brush Mark > Wave Brush Mark or press [M]. Use a diameter of 20 and
mark the implant head to simulate the area of contact. Separate the area and rename the
surface to “Contact”.

7. Rename the bottom surface to “Fixed’.

8. To generate a volume mesh go to Remesh > Create Volume Mesh. Use the parameters
as shown:

9. In 3-matic, select and copy (Ctrl+C) the assembly. Go back to Mimics, where the original
project was open, and press Ctrl+V to paste the volume meshes in the Mimics project.

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10. Rename the subvolumes in the FEA tab to avoid confusion, it can help to hide the
subvolumes one by one.

11. Go to FEA/CFD > Assign Material and select the Femur subvolume and assign the
following material properties:

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12. Select the Implant subvolume and assign it the following homogeneous material properties:

ρ = 4500 [kg/m3]
E = 55000 [MPa]
V = 0.33

For this exercise ANSYS will be used as a solver program. You can find short instructions on how to
import the mesh in other solver programs below.

Task 2. Exporting the mesh to ANSYS® Workbench™

1. Go to File > Export > Ansys, select the part and press Add. Set ANSYS as the output format.
Select the Output file and press Edit and add the surface structure. Press OK to export the part.

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2. Open ANSYS® WorkbenchTM

3. Drag the “External Model” component and “Static Structural” analysis to the Project Schematic.

4. Open External Model, with a double click on the Setup. Browse for the .cdb file generated by
Mimics. Make sure to put the units in mm.

5. Drag the Setup from the external component to Model of the Static Structural analysis. Then
update the project.

6. Double click on Model of the Static Structural analysis to open the analysis.

7. Open up the contact Region and change the contact definition from Bonded to Frictional and
use a Friction coefficient of 0.6.

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8. To assign the material properties right click on the Static Structural and insert a command. Right
click on the Command and Import the .txt file that was exported by Mimics.

9. Add a Fixed Support at the bottom of the femur.

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10. Add a force of 2800 N in the -Z direction on the contact surface of the implant.

11. Use the equivalent (von-Mises) stress for the solution and press “Solve” .

Exporting a file to ANSYS® Workbench™ version 14.0 or earlier

1. Open ANSYS® WorkbenchTM

2. Drag the “Finite Element Modeler” component and “Static Structural” analysis to the Project
Schematic.

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3. Right click on Model from the Finite Element Modeler > Add input mesh > Browse… Make sure
your input is on Mechanical APDL input (*.cdb). and select the file generated before.

The ANSYS® Finite Element Modeler can also read ABAQUS Input (*.inp) files and for this file format it
manages to use the surfaces as named selections.

4. Drag the Setup from the external component to Model of the Static Structural analysis. Then
update the project.

5. Adding the material properties is similar as explained above.

Exporting a file to ABAQUS/CAETM

1. When exporting an assembly to ABAQUSTM it is recommended to first split the assembly

in 3-matic with the Split Non-manifold Assembly tool in the Remesh tab.

2. During the export, File > Export > ABAQUS, you can group the parts in one .inp file (example
3-matic).

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3. Open Abaqus/CAETM . Create a new database.

4. File > Import > Model… Make sure the file filter is on Abaqus Input File (*.inp, *.pes) and
select the file that was generated before.

Exporting a file to COMSOL Multiphysics®

1. File > Export > COMSOL, if you want to export the surface boundaries to COMSOL
Multiphysics®, it is recommended to export both the surface and volume mesh (example 3-
matic).

2. Open COMSOL Multiphysics®.

3. Create a new model by using the “Model Wizard”.

4. Select “3D” as Space Dimension.

5. Select the Physics (e.g. select “Solid Mechanics (solid)” in the “Structural Mechanics” module)
and click Add. Continue by clicking Study.

6. Select the Study (e.g. Select Stationary ( )) and click Done.

7. In the Model Tree click “Geometry” and select “mm” as Length unit.

8. From the menu select the “Mesh” tab and click “Import”. Via the file browser navigate to
the .mphtxt file generated before. Click “Open” and click “Import” to start the import process.

Exporting a file to MSC Patran®

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1. In 3-matic go to File > Export > Patran or Nastran (example 3-matic).

2. Open MSC Patran®.

3. File > Import…

Set Object to Model.
Set Source to Neutral (.out) or MD Natran Input (.nas, .bdf).
Select the file generated by 3-matic and press Apply.

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/ Chapter 6: Texturing

Introduction to the Texturing module

The Texturing module offers the possibility to apply 2D/ 3D textures on a surface. This will be done
based on a picture (*.Jpeg, *.Bmp or *.png).
The first step in designing a texture is creating a UV map and applying a 2D texture on it. Secondly, to
obtain a 3D texture, an offset to every pixel of the picture can be given. This offset-value is depending
on the black/ grey/ white color in the picture.

Exercise 1: Applying a texture on a pedal.

Task 1: Creating UV Map

1. File > Open Project > DemoFiles > pedal.mxp

2. Go to the UV map and open the Create UV Map operation. As Entities, select the
surface as shown below. Check the Launch UV Page parameter in order to open the UV Page
after creating the UV map.

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Task 2: Creating a 2D texture

1. Go to the Texturing toolbar and select the UV Based Texture operation. Highlight the
Image parameter and browse to the TextureLibrary folder in the installation folder. Select the
012_Piramid-multi.png image. Uncheck the Tile image parameter in order to understand how
a single image is represented in the UV page. Apply the operation with the settings below. A
texture is created under the UV map entity in the object tree.

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2. The UV Page shows that the size properties set for the UV region correspond perfectly with
the amount of UV squares/image tiles.

3. Go to the property page of the 012_Piramid-multi.png texture and check the Tile image
parameter. Go to the UV Map toolbar and select Exit UV to close the UV page.

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4. Go to the Texturing toolbar and select the Fade Texture operation. As Fading guides,
select the contour of the surface on which the texture is applied. To select this contour,
highlight the Fading guides parameter and left-click on the contour in the work area. An entity-
list will show, select the contour entity. Apply the settings as shown below.

Fading a texture toward its borders will create a more realistic 3D effect afterwards.

5. As a result, a new UV map is created with the specific faded texture image. Delete the original
UV Map.

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Task 3: Converting the 2D texture to a 3D texture

1. Go to the Texturing menu and open the 3D Texture operation. Use the faded texture to
create the 3D effect. Apply the settings as shown below.

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/ Chapter 7: Topology optimization

Exercise 1: Import and clean-up of raw data

Task 1: Surface manipulation of raw topology data

1. File > Open Project > DemoFiles > GE Bracket benchmark.mxp

The raw topology data consists of one big surface, without any splits. Due to the rough
meshing, the quality of the screw holes is completely lost on the raw data. The easiest way
to regain the good quality, is to:
 Fill up the holes
 Smoothen the rough model
 Create clean holes using the Design Space

2. Go to View > Shading Modes > Filled with Triangles Edges to change the triangle view.

3. Go to the Fix toolbar and select the Reduce operation. Reduce will lower the amount
of triangles, taking into account a certain geometrical. Apply the operation with the settings
as shown below.

4. Open the dropdown menu of the Brush Mark in the Mark toolbar to select the Wave
Brush Mark operation. Change the Brush diameter to 0.5 mm in the operation page. Mark
each area in a hole with the mark brush.

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Tip: use CTRL + marking brush to unmark triangles

5. Highlight the Marked Triangles in the object tree and press Delete. The meshed model now
contains holes, so it is not possible to produce the part in this state. In the Object Tree you
can see that a list of “bad contours” is identified.

6. Select the Fix Wizard in the Fix toolbar for automatic STL fixing.
 First, the Fix Wizard provides an overview of all the errors present in the STL file.
 Select the part that you want to be analyzed by clicking on the part name in the
Object Tree or immediately on the model itself in the work area.
 Press Update to see the different kinds of errors. Ignore the overlapping and
intersecting triangles for this case.
 Press Follow Advise to fix the part automatically. This is a step-based approach so
it may take several clicks to get the part fixed.

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The current mesh of the raw topology data is very rough. A first step that can be used to remodel the
part, is to wrap a new STL surface around the existing one. In later steps, the wrapped surface can be
further smoothened and cleaned, so a clean model can be exported.

7. Go to the Design toolbar and select the Wrap operation. This operation will wrap a
new STL surface around the selected part using the next parameters.

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Next, the overall surface can be smoothened to gain a more organic result. The smoothing algorithm
gets rid of all sharp zones on the surface of the part.

8. Go to the Fix toolbar and select the Smooth operation. Assure the Use compensation
checkbox is checked. This will apply an additional offset after the smoothing, so less
thickness is lost in the model. Yet, the smoothing effect can be a bit weakened

To further refine the mesh, use a combination of:

 Fix > Reduce

 Fix > Subdivide

 Fix > Smooth

The overall goal of this process was to make sure that the organic part of the model is sufficiently smooth,
so it represents a clean model to print and the surface is clean enough to be exported as NURBS
The smoother the mesh, the lower the tolerances can be put to export towards CAD surfaces.

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Task 2: Redesign and export of CAD-like entities

1. Go to the Design toolbar and select the Boolean Intersection operation. As Entities,
select the design space and the cleaned mesh from the previous steps.

The resulting part is a clean STL file that fits in the given Design Space and contains the same surface
splits on the boundary surfaces. Next, the organic surface is sufficiently smooth to patch it with NURBS
that stick close to the original topology optimized result

For the more experienced user, more analytical surfaces can be made for an even better result. These
advanced design operations are not considered as the goal of this tutorial.

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To properly calculate the strength of the optimized part, you need to export a clean mesh towards
simulation packages. Using the Remesh module, you can perform all the prerequisites to properly
analyze the part in FEA.

2. Go to the Remesh toolbar and select the Adaptive Remesh operation. Apply the
settings as shown below.

Once a uniform surface mesh is generated, you can generate solid elements within the STL volume.

3. Go to the Remesh toolbar and select the Create Volume Mesh operation. In order to
generate solid elements within the part, the STL cannot contain any bad contour nor
intersecting triangles. Use the Fix Wizard to analyze and fix these potential errors.

4. In order to export the mesh towards different FEA packages go to File > Export > Abaqus /
Ansys / Nastran / Patran / Fluent / Comsol. For more details, see the Remesh chapter.

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If the part has been remodeled in a proper way, you can also export it as an .iges or .step file, using the
CAD Link Module. In order to perform this step, you need to be sure the following requirements are met:
 Surfaces must be as smooth as possible
o Small triangles with a very smooth alignment
o The more accurate the mesh, the lower the tolerance while exporting towards CAD
 Intersecting and overlapping triangles must be removed
o Use the Fix Wizard to automatically fix these
o The presence of intersecting and overlapping triangles can make the export to CAD
surfaces impossible on those zones.
 Small sharp artefacts of the mesh might result in a hotspot of surfaces
o Make sure you remove them properly. Use Remove Spikes operation from Fix men or
Local Smooth from Finish menu

Once the above mentioned issues are removed, go to the CAD Link toolbar and select the CAD
Link operation in order to export your file.

/ Chapter 8: Lattice
Exercise 1: Creating a porous bone prosthesis

This exercise shows how to create a porous bone prosthesis. The use of porous designs enhances
bone and tissue ingrowth.

Task 1: Prepare femur prosthesis

1. Go to File > Open Project > DemoFiles > Femur.mxp

2. First, a cylinder needs to be created to cut a prosthesis-like part out of the femur. Go to
the Design menu and choose the tool Create Primitive > Create Cylinder. Choose 2 Points as
method and select a radius of 30 mm. Click on the position where the bottom of the cylinder
should be located to select Point 1. Click on the position where the top of the cylinder should
be located for Point 2. Make sure the cylinder covers the whole femur diameter before moving
on.

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3. Cut the femur with the created cylinder. Hide the created parts one by one to figure out
which part is situated underneath the cylinder. Rename this part to Lattice Volume. Hide the
cylinder and the remaining part of the femur.

4. Optimize the surface triangulation with the Uniform Remesh tool. Set the parameters as
shown below and apply the operation.

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Task 2: Create porous structure

1. In the File menu, select Import Part and browse to the installation folder of 3-matic. Go to
the folder UnitCellLibrary and import Dodecahedron.mxp. This unit cell will be used to
create the inner, porous structure of the bone-prosthesis.

2. Go to the Lattice tab and select the Unit Cell Based Lattice operation. As Entity
select the Lattice volume. As Unit cell, select the Dodecahedron graph set in the graph list
of the Dodecahedron part. Rename the created graph to Inner graph.

3. Make sure the part Lattice volume is visible (right-click on it in the object tree and
select show). Go to the Lattice tab and select the Mesh Based Lattice operation. Apply the
settings as shown below.

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4. For each surface in the Lattice volume, a graph is created. Merge those together in the
object tree and rename the merged graph to Outer graph. This is the outside of the
prosthesis which will be in contact with the rest of the femur.

Task 3: Finish design and assign thickness

1. Select the Connect Graphs operation in the Lattice toolbar. Apply the settings as
shown below and make sure the Number of connections is 1. The created connecting
graph between the inner and outer graph is stored in a separate graph named Graph. To
visualize the connecting graph better, select them in the object tree so they turn green
(see picture below). Merge the created Graph with the Inner graph. Make sure the name
is Inner graph after the merge.

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2. Assign a constant thickness to the Outer graph by using the Edit Graph Properties
operation. Uncheck the Use existing thickness box in order to set the Thickness to 0.6.

3. Assign a Porosity Based Thickness to the Inner graph. Set a Target porosity of 90%.

4. Next, filter out the unconnected beams. These beams are not printable and should
therefore be removed. Go to Lattice > Filter > Filter Loose Beams. By setting the Filter
method to Mark, the filtered beams become marked in the object tree. Delete the marked
beams in order to get rid of them.

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5. Merge the Inner graph and Outer graph and rename the final result to Finished graph.
Drag and drop the graph in the Lattice volume part. If there are still surfaces present in the
Lattice volume part, delete them.

6. Lastly, select the Convert Lattice to Mesh operation in the Lattice tab. Apply the
settings shown below.

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Exercise 2: Design of a filter using lattice structures

During this exercise, a filter will be designed with two different types of lattice structures. A quad based
lattice structure on the outer-most surface and the inner-most surface. The middle volume will be filled
by unit cells based lattice. Afterwards, the proper connections between them will be assured. The
following images show the different lattice structures created on each surface and volume.

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Figure a. Figure b. Figure c.

The start file contains 4 parts:

- Outer surface and Inner Quad surfaces (figure a, c): used to create the quad based lattice on
these surfaces
- Unit structure surface (figure b): used to fill a single unit cell structure repeated in the solid
volume of this part
- Top Bottom solid surface: not modified during the project

Task 1: Creating a quad based lattice

1. Go to File > Open Project > DemoFiles > Filter.mxp

2. In the object Tree, select all the parts except Inner Quad surface. Right-click on one of the selected
parts and select hide.

3. Go to the Lattice toolbar and select the Quad based lattice operation. As Entities, select the
Inner Quad surface part and set the Target edge length to 5 mm. Click Apply.

4. Go to the object tree and select the part Inner Quad surface. Right-click on the Surface list and
select Empty List in order to remove the remaining surfaces of the part.

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5. Repeat the same steps for the part Outer surface but set the Target edge length to 8 mm.

6. In order to visualize the results of both steps, select the part Inner Quad surface and part Outer
surface and shown them.

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Task 2: Creating a unit cell based lattice

1. In the object Tree, select all the parts except Unit structure surface. Right-click on one of the
selected parts and select shown.

2. Go to File > Import Part > UnitCellLibrary > Diamond-Crystal-Lattice.mxp

3. Go to the Lattice toolbar and select the Unit Cell Based Lattice operation. Use the settings
as shown below and press Apply. A new part is created named Unit structure surface with
graphs.

Task 3: Make graph connections

1. Go to the object tree and show the Unit structure surface with graph part and the Inner quad
surface part. (Right-click > show)

2. Go to the object tree and open the Inner quad surface part tree. Open the Graph List and Merge
Mantle-0 Graph and Mantle-1 Graph. (select both > right-click > Merge). The merged part is
called Mantle-1 Graph.

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3. Select the Connect Graphs operation from the Lattice toolbar. As Source graphs, select
the quad graph ‘Mantle-1 Graph’ from the Graph List of the part Inner quad surface. As Target
graphs, select the unit structure Graph from Graph List of the part Unit structure surface with
graphs. Set the Number of connections to 3 in order to make dense connections between both
graphs. Apply the settings as shown below.

The minimum and maximum connection radius helps to specify the distance that the operation will look
for in the nearest neighboring points on the target graph to make connections.

4. Repeat same steps for merging the quad graphs of Outer surface (Mantle-1 Graph and Mantle-
0 Graph). Then Connect the quad graph Mantle-1 Graph from the Graph List of the part Outer
surface with the Graph of the part Unit structure surface with graphs. Set the Number of
connections to 1 and increase the Maximum connection radius in order to create less dense
connections between both graphs. Apply the settings as shown below.

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5. Hide all the parts except Outer surface, Inner surface, Top bottom solid surface and Unit
structure surface with graphs.

Task 4: Assign graph properties

1. Go to the Lattice toolbar and select the Edit Graph Properties operation. As Entities, select
Outer surface and assign a Thickness of 1.2 mm to indicate the diameter of the beams.

2. Repeat the above steps but with different parameters for Unit structure surface with graphs part,
and Inner quad surface’ part as shown below. For each graph set, the parameters can be viewed
in the properties page. For example, the parameter for the Mantle_1 Graph of the part Outer
surface are shown

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The part is ready to be sent for Materialise Build Processor for slice based printing.

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Task 5: Create mesh from graphs (Optional)

1. Go to the Lattice toolbar and select the Convert Lattice to Mesh operation. As Entities,
select Mantle-1 Graph and Graph from the Outer surface part. Apply the next settings.

This operation can be repeated for all the graphs to convert them to meshes. In order to avoid memory
issues, it is not recommended to use the Convert Lattice to Mesh operation when the design is big and
complicated. In such a case, it is recommended to assign graph properties via the Edit Graph Properties
tool and then use the Materialise Build Processor for slice based printing.

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/ Chapter 9: Reverse Engineering

Exercise 1: Anatomical Reverse Engineering

Medical imaging data, like CT or MRI, can be segmented to create accurate, patient-realistic, 3D models.
However, these complex, organic 3D models are generated in the STL file format, and this format is not
welcomed by traditional CAD softwares. Therefore 3-matic has an Anatomical Reverse Engineering
module. This module creates solid (C0-continuity) IGES files from your anatomical models. And what
is even better; it does so completely automatically.

1. Import the project ‘’FinishedFemur.mcs” into 3-matic.

2. Go to the Automatic Rectangular Patch option in the Surface toolbar and select Femur into
Entities selection box. The Part Complexity is measured automatically.

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3. Go to the File menu in the main toolbar. Select Export > Iges. Since the patching is already
done, the part only needs to be exported to Iges, so Patching can be checked OFF.

Exercise 2: CAD link

The CAD link operation of 3-matic provides reverse
engineering based on the surface structure. Every surface
will be considered separately to convert into a CAD-face
according to the following principle:

 First feature recognition is done. If a surface can

be recognized as an analytical primitive such as
plane, cylinder, revolve surface, NURBS … then
this surface will be reversed to a primitive face.
 If feature recognition fails, e.g. on freeform
(scanned) surfaces, an automatic patching will
start. This will split up the surface in different
patches, which then can be converted into NURBS
faces.

This principle requires an initial surface segmentation of

STL files before conversion. Using 3-matic, this surface structure is automatically generated and
preserved in all operations. Boolean operations, CAD operations … all will preserve and/or generate a
surface structure. On the other hand, surface segmentation can be done as well using automatic and
manual operations such as marking and curve operations.

1. Go to File > Open Project > DemoFiles > lion_cavity.mxp. This project contains one part, called
‘Lion Cavity’. The part already contains a surface structure, which is preserved in the project file.
No further preparations is needed on the file.

2. Go to the CAD Link operation in the CAD Link toolbar. As Entity, select the Lion Cavity
part. This operation will convert a file from STL to STEP or IGES (Reverse engineering).
The Tolerance parameters differ form part to part and can be estimated by pressing the Estimate
button. Set a Patch density of 20. This parameter determines in how many patches 3-matic will
minimally split the surfaces that were not recognized as a primitive feature.
Clicking the Preview button executes already a first step in the reverse engineering process:
the feature recognition and automatic patching is already done. Upon applying the operation,
the actual conversion to IGES or STEP is done, and the file is written to the specified location.

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3. The result of the CAD link operation is a STEP or IGES file in the specified location. But also
the logger window is giving feedback on the reverse engineering. Here you can clearly see that
6 planes and 4 cylinders have been recognized in the part, based on the surface information.
The ‘freeform’ surface has been converted into 244 NURBS patches.

To be able to create a STEP or IGES file from an STL file, make sure the surface is as smooth as
possible, there are no intersecting and overlapping triangles and small sharp mesh artefacts are
removed.

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