ANSYS SpaceCliam Training Course: Part 1

Workspace, Toolbars, and Structure Panel

This session guides you toward easier and more efficient use of SpaceClaim by providing a clear understanding of its user interface. We’ll introduce essential interface elements and the overall software structure, preparing you with the necessary foundation before starting practical modeling. Complete familiarity with the environment and its features is crucial before beginning 2D and 3D design work.

1. Understanding the User Interface

To help you become comfortable with SpaceClaim, we’ll start by explaining key interface elements. The most important component is the Ribbon toolbar, organized into clear, functional tabs designed for quick command access while providing a visual and user-friendly workspace. This intuitive layout reduces complexity and makes the learning process easier and more effective.

2. Working with the Structure Panel

The Structure Panel serves as the backbone of project organization in SpaceClaim. Beyond its traditional functionality, the panel offers modern and enhanced features. You’ll learn how to view, group, and manage parts and assemblies within the Structure Panel. Mastering these skills enables better project organization and greater control over your design process.

Additionally, the Structure Panel includes the Group (Name Selection) section, where you can organize geometry elements such as planes, lines, and solids according to your simulation needs—a critical capability for preparing models for analysis.

3. Mastering Navigation Tools

This lesson introduces essential Navigation Controls for interacting with 3D models, including Zoom, Rotate, and Pan functions. These can be performed using the mouse or through the View bar in the Structure Panel. These controls allow you to adjust viewing angles according to your needs and examine or refine geometry with precision and confidence.

4. Customizing Your Workspace

Finally, we’ll cover workspace customization options. You’ll learn how to manually arrange tool placement to suit your workflow and how to reset the interface to its default state if needed. This workspace adaptability enhances productivity and allows you to align the environment with your personal preferences.

Session Summary

By the end of this session, you’ll have a clear understanding of the SpaceClaim user interface and its organizational framework. You’ll acquire skills in managing panels, utilizing navigation tools, and preparing the 3D workspace—establishing a solid foundation for direct design and modeling in upcoming sessions. These skills provide greater efficiency, clarity, and confidence in using SpaceClaim as a powerful design and simulation tool.

Workspace, Docking Layout, Units, and Display Tools

This session explores some of the most practical features in SpaceClaim that help you design more accurately and efficiently. We’ll start with tools like Snap to Grid and Snap to Angle, which assist in creating cleaner and more precise designs. Then, we’ll explore the Display tab, which enhances how you visualize and analyze geometries. Understanding these features enables you to create models with higher accuracy and better organization. The goal is to improve design quality and familiarize you with practical tools that support effective modeling workflows.

1. Using Snap to Grid

When Snap to Grid mode is enabled, sketch elements like lines and points automatically align to grid corners. This ensures more precise geometry design with consistency and accuracy throughout your modeling process. For example, when drawing a block, the software automatically snaps the starting point to the nearest grid corner, making it easier to create accurate geometry. When disabled, you gain more freedom and flexibility in sketching. While enabling this feature helps create precise, well-structured designs, disabling it provides greater creative flexibility.

2. Working with Snap to Angle

The Snap to Angle option simplifies drawing lines at standard angles. Normally, the software may display non-standard angles like 46.7 degrees. By enabling Snap to Angle, the software automatically locks lines to common angles such as 15°, 30°, or 45°. This feature improves both accuracy and speed when creating clean, standardized angular relationships, making your design process faster and more convenient.

3. Display Tab and Graphics Options

The Display Tab under Graphics offers several visualization modes to enhance your modeling experience:

• Wireframe: Shows only edges without surfaces for a simplified view

• Shaded: Displays geometry with basic surface shading

• Enhanced Shaded: Provides improved visual rendering for better surface clarity

• Hidden Line: Displays both visible and hidden edges, allowing you to see lines behind surfaces

• Hidden Line Removed: Similar to shaded view but without hidden lines for a cleaner appearance

Additionally, the Split Viewports option divides your display area into multiple simultaneous views:

• Two Vertical Viewports: Display geometry from two different perspectives side by side

• Four Viewports: Provide four perspectives (top, front, side, and isometric) for enhanced clarity when analyzing complex geometries

This visualization flexibility helps you examine every aspect of your models, ensuring better understanding and verification throughout the design process.

Session Conclusion

The combination of Snap to Grid, Snap to Angle, and Display Tab Options provides powerful support for creating precise geometries with clear visualization in ANSYS SpaceClaim:

• Snap to Grid ensures accurate element placement

• Snap to Angle simplifies working with standard angles

• Display Options and Split Views enhance model visualization and understanding

Together, these features improve both design accuracy and workflow efficiency, giving you complete control over your modeling environment.

Introduction to 2D Sketching Tools

In this session, we’ll introduce some of the most important tools in SpaceClaim’s 2D sketch environment. We’ll start by exploring basic sketching tools and learning different methods for drawing fundamental shapes like lines and circles. Then, we’ll move to the Modify section to explore practical tools including Mirror, Create Corner, and other useful features. Mastering these sketching and modification tools is essential—they not only make the drawing process more efficient but also improve the accuracy and overall quality of your geometries.

1. Fundamental Sketch Tools

We’ll begin by learning SpaceClaim’s fundamental sketching tools for creating simple geometries. You’ll discover different methods for drawing lines and circles. For circles, we’ll practice the default method (defining center then radius) as well as the three-point circle method. Additionally, you’ll learn how to draw rectangles using both two-point and three-point techniques, giving you multiple approaches for different design scenarios.

2. Advanced Sketching Features

After mastering basic sketching commands, we’ll explore more advanced tools like Arc, Spline, and Construction Line. Arc tools enable you to create curves by specifying start and end points or by defining three points along the curve. The Spline tool is particularly useful for creating complex shapes with smooth transitions, while Construction Lines provide reference geometry that helps organize sketches and maintain symmetry. These features give you greater flexibility and control when drawing complex shapes, making your sketching process more versatile and efficient.

3. Modify Tools in Sketch Mode

This session also covers several important Modify section tools used to adjust and refine sketches. The Mirror tool duplicates selected geometries across a reference line, ensuring design symmetry. The Create Corner and Rounded Corner tools simplify connecting two lines, either forming sharp corners or creating smooth fillets. Using these tools makes your geometry cleaner and more professional while minimizing errors that may occur during later 3D modeling stages.

Session Conclusion

This session familiarizes you with design tools and modification commands for creating efficient and precise 2D models. Basic tools play a fundamental role in building accurate, reliable geometry, while modification tools enable useful adjustments like symmetry and refinements. Combining these functions improves both the quality and speed of your design workflow while laying the foundation for more reliable and effective 3D modeling in future sessions.

Constraints and 3D Modeling Fundamentals

In this SpaceClaim training session, we’ll provide a comprehensive introduction to the Constraint environment tools. Then, we’ll introduce essential 3D modeling tools, with the “Pull” command being the most important—it serves as your gateway from 2D to 3D design. You’ll learn practical Pull command functions including Pull, Direction, Revolve, and Sweep.

1. Working with Constraints

The Constraints environment in SpaceClaim applies geometric constraints to 2D designs. When creating sketches, you can use Constraint tools to define geometric relationships between lines, arcs, points, and other sketch elements, achieving precise control over dimensions and positions. This session covers all constraint tools including Dimension, Coincident Constraint, Parallel Constraint, Perpendicular Constraint, and Equal Constraint—essential for creating accurate, well-defined sketches.

2. Introduction to 3D Modeling

2.1. The Pull Command

The Pull command is one of SpaceClaim’s most important 3D design tools, allowing you to create 3D shapes from 2D geometry. This versatile tool has extensive capabilities. In this session, we’ll focus on its most practical and fundamental features, including Revolve and Sweep.

2.1.1. Revolve

The Revolve option is one of the most efficient tools within the Pull command. It works by selecting a rotation axis for your geometry and revolving it by a specified angle around that axis. For example, by revolving a rectangular geometry 360 degrees around one of its sides, you can create a cylinder. This technique is perfect for creating axisymmetric objects like bottles, vases, or mechanical components.

2.1.2. Sweep

The Sweep option is one of the most practical and important tools in the Pull toolset. This command moves a 2D geometry (profile) along a drawn 2D path, creating a 3D solid. Simply put, you define a profile and a path, and the software extrudes the profile along the selected path to produce your desired 3D shape. For example, using a circle as the profile and a line or curve as the path, you can create three-dimensional pipes, coils, or complex curved structures.

Session Summary

This session completed important concepts in the 2D environment, including working with Constraint section tools, and introduced the fundamentals of creating 3D objects.

By the end of this session, you’ll be able to draw simple 3D shapes such as cubes, cylinders, and hollow curved pipes. Each of these models can be created using different tools available in the Pull command, giving you a solid foundation for more complex 3D modeling in upcoming sessions.

Mastering the Move Tool in SpaceClaim

1. Introduction

In this session, you’ll become familiar with one of SpaceClaim’s most practical tools: the Move tool. Beyond learning precise geometry selection techniques, you’ll explore various Move command options for repositioning objects. These options include Move Along Trajectory, Move Direction, Anchor, Move Radially About Axis, Fulcrum, and the Up To feature—each highly effective in different scenarios. Throughout this lesson, we’ll provide practical examples and hands-on exercises to help you apply these tools efficiently in your own projects.

2. Selection Techniques

When working with the Move command or any SpaceClaim tool, making accurate geometry selections is essential. Selected entities can be surfaces, points, edges, or bodies, and choosing the right one ensures proper command execution.

This session teaches two practical selection methods: Box Selection and Component Selection, which become available once the Move command is activated. These techniques improve the accuracy and efficiency of your geometry selections in SpaceClaim.

3. Understanding the Move Tool

The Move command is one of SpaceClaim’s most practical tools, allowing you to reposition selected entities—surfaces, points, edges, and components—along the default X, Y, and Z directions, and rotate them around different axes.

Beyond these basic functions, the Move command offers several advanced options that make geometry manipulation easier, more precise, and highly effective. Let’s explore these features and their practical applications.

3.1. Move Direction

The Move Direction command moves geometry along a specific direction or reference line. For example, if you draw a diagonal line and activate this command, the selected geometry translates precisely along that line’s direction, ensuring movement remains perfectly parallel to your chosen reference.

3.2. Move Along Trajectory

Similar to Move Direction, the Move Along Trajectory option allows geometry movement but isn’t restricted to straight paths. Instead, this command enables geometry to follow curved or complex trajectories. For instance, if you sketch a curve, the selected geometry can be repositioned exactly along that curve—especially useful when working with complex models requiring precise positioning along non-linear paths.

3.3. Anchor

The Anchor option lets you reposition the Move Handle. By default, the handle is placed at the selected geometry’s center. However, you may need to move geometry relative to another specific location—a corner, side face, edge, or user-defined point. The Anchor tool makes this possible by relocating the move handle to your desired position, enabling more controlled and precise movements.

3.4. Move Radially About Axis

The Move Radially About Axis option repositions selected geometry by moving it radially about a defined axis or reference line. Instead of translating geometry along straight directions (X, Y, Z), this tool lets you pivot or rotate geometry around a chosen axis—especially useful when arranging components around a central axis, such as blades, circular patterns, or rotational assemblies.

3.5. Fulcrum

The Fulcrum option allows you to define a pivot point (or hinge point) for rotation. By default, geometry rotates about its center or chosen axis. However, you may need rotation to occur about a custom point. With the Fulcrum tool, you can relocate the pivot to any desired model location, giving you precise control over rotational movement. This feature is especially useful when simulating mechanisms like doors, levers, or arms that rotate around specific hinge points.

3.6. Up To

The Move Up To option moves selected geometry up to a chosen reference—a face, surface, plane, or edge. Instead of specifying a numerical distance, you simply select the target reference, and the geometry translates until it exactly aligns with or touches the reference. This feature is particularly useful for positioning parts or surfaces precisely relative to existing geometry without manual distance calculation.

4. Session Summary

This session aimed to deepen your understanding of the Move tool, one of the most practical and versatile features in 3D modeling. This tool greatly simplifies the design workflow, especially when dealing with complex geometries.

As demonstrated, when creating 3D models, you may need to reposition certain components or duplicate complex shapes. In such cases, familiarity with the Move tool becomes highly valuable, enabling you to work more efficiently and with greater precision in your SpaceClaim projects.

Creating Patterns: Linear and Circular Arrays

1. Introduction

In this SpaceClaim training session, we’ll introduce one of the software’s most important and practical tools: the Pattern command. This command is available in two types: Linear Pattern and Circular Pattern. In this lesson, we’ll create unique and practical geometries to demonstrate each option.

As an example of Linear Pattern, we’ll design a pin fin heat sink. To demonstrate Circular Pattern, we’ll model a gear—both practical examples that showcase the power of pattern commands in real-world applications.

2. Understanding the Pattern Tool

The Pattern command in SpaceClaim allows you to replicate geometry in a regular and organized manner within your design space. With this tool, you can create multiple instances of a single base geometry along different directions (linear or circular), enabling you to quickly build complex and structured parts. This feature is especially valuable for saving design time and creating practical geometries efficiently.

3. Linear Pattern

The Linear Pattern command replicates geometry along a straight line. One of the great features of this tool in SpaceClaim is its flexibility—you can apply it in either one dimension or two dimensions simultaneously.

In each dimension, you can define both the number of pattern instances you want and the distance between objects. This gives you complete control over creating structured arrays like heat sink fins, bolt patterns, or ventilation grilles.

4. Circular Pattern

The Circular Pattern command in SpaceClaim copies and replicates geometry along a circular path. You can specify the number of repetitions, and the software distributes them evenly around a chosen axis or center point. This feature is especially useful for designing geometries such as gears, fan blades, turbine components, or circular hole patterns—any design requiring radial symmetry.

5. Session Summary

Based on the various commands we’ve learned in previous sessions—such as Pull and Move—and now the Pattern command in this session, along with your advanced familiarity with the 2D sketching environment, you should now be able to create more advanced, practical, and diverse geometries.

The content presented in this session complements and completes the topics covered in previous lessons. By combining all the skills learned throughout these sessions, you’re now better prepared to draw even more complex geometries in the upcoming advanced lessons. You have the foundational tools to tackle sophisticated modeling challenges with confidence.