Slice

The "AVC Slice" plugin will help speed up your 3D-modelling of furniture or any products made from sheet materials. The command Slice is usually used to separate details from solids. Unlike the "slice" command, ASL (AVCSlice) does not need to specify the cutting plane, and you do not need to tell it what part to cut away and/or leave. All you need to do is specify a surface to peel and what thickness of the material you need. What a time saver! Moreover, the smart command ASL can be peeled from the surface of a cylinder, cone and other curved surfaces. You can easily model thin curved plating. No calculator, no preliminary construction are needed. There is no need to rearrange the coordinate system. No need to draw supporting segments and build section surface for slice. Just click on the solid surface and adjust the delamination (peeling) thickness. The program knows 3 different ways of peeling and can pick the best itself, and can provide a choice to you.

Additional features of the program:

• • The program knows 3 different ways of peeling and can choose the best one itself, and can provide you with a choice.

  • You can select surfaces before calling the command ASL or after calling at your discretion

  • You can pre-select several surfaces of one solid and the program will peel them all at once.

  • The program itself can find and add to the selected adjacent (contiguous) surfaces that mate with each other without kinks.

  • All selected and mated surfaces are highlighted during thickness entry.

  • The slices cut off from contiguous surfaces are automatically glued into one solid.

  • If the cut off slice has broken up into separate fragments, then the program will save them as separate solid.

  • The program can transfer the color and material of the selected surface to the cut solids. Also, you can specify a layer and material for all parts.

  • The program can runs in a cycle until you press ESC. The thickness of the peeling can be set only once, and the surfaces peel off as much as you like, and on different solid.

  • Main settings are available from the command line. You can create macros for different command options.

  • There is сonvenient settings dialog.

  • You can customize up to 9 slice styles and quickly switch between them directly from the command line.

Read about downloading and installing the program here.

To run the plugin, you will have to register account and top up your account balance by making a donation or receiving bonuses.

Then you can activate one of the licenses:

• • Annual license - 10 EUR.

  • Unlimited license - 50 EUR. Free updates for 1 year.

  • The trial period is 20 days.

• 1. We get started with solid box. Draw a box with the maximum dimensions of the future product. We can also use cylinders and other solids, their intersection and union to create one large solid body describing the form of the future product. 

  2. Next we work like a sculptor, chiselling from the lumps stone until the solid form of the statue is left. So we begin to cut a solid into separate parts. For example, to make an ambry, we first call the command ASL, click on the upper surface of the work piece, we input the thickness of chipboard to 16mm. Just 2 clicks we get a separate table top part. 

  3. Press Shift+Middle Mouse Button to rotate the model to lateral surface. Click the spacebar to repeat the command ASL, click on the lateral surface, and again click the spacebar instead of specifying the thickness (Last command remember the entered thickness). Finish! One click we got a lateral wall. 

  4. Continue to rotate the model and cut the second lateral wall, a rear wall, a bottom board. 

  5. Delete unnecessary piece of solid remaining in the middle. 

  6. Move the bottom surface of the model using GIZMO and copy it up to make another shelf. 

  7. And so on… 

Thus, the basic modeling process is cutting the parts from the work piece using ASL command. We do not need to know beforehand what size the internal parts have obtained. They are formed themselves. Of course, sometimes you need other commands - for example, the shift of the faces of solids can be done easily through the selection of these faces (using Ctrl) and moving them to GIZMO. No matter you are designing a simple cube or complex pyramid or a cylinder Reception stand - anyways "A>V>C> Slice" do its job equally at ease. 

Operating procedure

You can select a surface before invoking the ASL command. Use Ctrl to select the faces of the solid, not the entire solid. Moreover, you can select several faces, even if they are not adjacent. But only one solid must be chosen.

If the program does not find solid faces selected in advance, then it will ask you to select one face. You will only need to make one click. Adjacent surfaces will be selected automatically and will also be highlighted.

Next, the program will ask you to enter the peeling thickness.

Request thickness contains options:

• • SWitchStyle - quickly switch between options-set by it number. 

  • TUNE - This option open settings dialog window. 

  • PlaneMethod - selecting Method of the cutting plane

  • SurfaceMethod - selecting Method of the cutting curved surface

  • OffsetFaceMethod - selecting Method of the face offset

  • AllMethods - try to use all three methods in the following sequence: offset, plane, surface. (default)

  • COntiguous - automatically add adjacent to the selected surfaces, i.e. conjugate without kink (kink not more than 0.1 degrees between tangents)

After entering the thickness, the program will begin to peel off the surfaces and display results on the command line.

All successful slices will be saved.

If the CYclically mode is on, the program will again ask for the choice of surface. You can pick up the surface of another solid. Just click on it with the mouse. The program will add contiguous surfaces to the selection. Thickness and options will no longer be requested. Press ESC to finish peeling.

Follow the messages on the console. There may be error messages.

Slicing Styles

You can configure up to 9 different presets to quickly switch between them. Each style has a number by which you can switch settings from the command line. The ASL command settings are common with the MultiSlice command, but some of the options are not used in ASL. Switching the current Slicing style will change the style of the MultiSlice command too.

Methods of peeling

The program knows 3 different ways of peeling and can pick the best itself, and can provide a choice to you. The method is selected by the tin during the request for the thickness of the peeling:

Method of the cutting plane

The program builds a plane along the selected face, shifts it by a given thickness and cuts the solid by this plane. This is the simplest method, but it is not suitable for curved faces. Another problem is that the solid will be cut through, because the plane is infinite. This can be inconvenient when the solid is strongly bent.

Method of the cutting curved surface

The program takes the surface of the face (flat or curvilinear), offset it inward by the thickness and then cuts the body with this surface. Often the surface is not enough to cut the entire solid. Then the program saves the surface in the drawing so that you can complete it and make the cut into a manual one. The method is quite dangerous, AutoCAD can stop working with a fatal error. Especially older versions of AutoCAD until 2016. To avoid fatal errors, the program checks the validity of the solid and warns the user if it is not valid.

Method of the face offset

The program makes a copy of the solid and offset the selected face inside. Then, a it small copy is subtracted from the original solid. This method gives the best results in most cases. However, there are restrictions - see below.

By default, the program itself enumerates all three methods. First, the offset method, then the cutting plane, then the surface. If the first method fails, the next method is used. In the console (command line) there are messages about the methods used and the reasons for their failure.

Contiguous (mating) surfaces

You can configure the program to automatically add contiguous surfaces. Use this opportunity when you need to make a bent part, smoothly transitioning from a flat surface to a curved surface and vice versa. It is enough to choose one part of such a multi-surface, and the rest of the parts will be chosen by the program itself. So that solid surfaces are considered contiguous, the angle between the tangents at the junction should be less than 0.1 degrees, and the junction line should be straight. Even surfaces that do not match the specified direction will be selected if they are mated without kinks with suitable ones. Adjacent surfaces will cut as a single unit, you will get one slice. Between them is never made a miter joint.

Keep in mind that when pairing lines and arcs “by eye” you will never achieve the correct pairing (with an accuracy of 0.1 degrees). Use the polyline transition from linear to arched segments and the transitions between arched segments when AutoCAD itself builds the exact conjugation. Draw splines again using polylines from arched segments. And then extrude this closed polyline into a solid. Or build a solid with flat surfaces, and then do chamfers (_Fillet) on the edges. Only in this way can you achieve that ASL considers surfaces contiguous.

Other settings

You can read about the rest of the program settings on the MultiSlice page.

Known Issues

• • As with any plug-in, A>V>C> program uses built-in capabilities of the AutoCAD. And many of the features of AutoCAD are not perfect; do not always do their job. Often after a long modeling AutoCAD no longer can perform even simple modification of solids. Then you need to model this solid again. Even if you do not use the ASL command, you still can not work with this solid.

  • The command does not work or you cannot select the right face if SolidHistory on. I strongly recommend that you always set the properties of solids "History" = None. The best way to fix it - written in your DWT-template system variable SOLIDHIST = 0.

  • The offset method of slice has one limitation: if the selected face has blind holes and their depth is less than the thickness of the peeling, the program will not work correctly, make through holes in the detached piece and the convexity at the holes on the remaining solid. In this case, use the _Slice command.

  • In the cut slice, the color and material settings of the faces can be dropped. Sometimes the source solid is assigned the color of the faces to "By Layer". It's the whims of AutoCAD and I do not know how to fix it. The standard _Slice command behaves even worse. Try another peeling method. Assign the color of the faces after modeling all the details.

  • When many faces cut, the cutting order can greatly affect the result. Especially when detached by a cutting plane. However, if you instructed the program to peel several surfaces in one command, then it will do it in completely random order. And the result can be very upsetting. In such cases, you should turn off the selection of contiguous surfaces and make peeling sequentially along one face in the correct order.

  • This command always glues adjacent cut slices together, in one solid. This behavior cannot be changed. Use the more advanced MultiSlice command that able to make Miter Joints between slices.

  • If you did the pairing of adjacent surfaces “by eye”, then the selection of contiguous surfaces will probably not work. The angle between contiguous planes should be less than 0.1 degrees. Such accuracy can be ensured only if you make the right pairing when constructing the original contours, but not "by eye"

  • There are severe cases when AutoCAD disfigures the original solid. Moreover, this may be the other end of the solid, which you did not touch. And BricsCAD may also fail and block the Undo command. Remember the importance of drawing backups and autosaves.