Associative Transformations

The think3 application provides an enhanced set of commands enabling you to apply associative transformations to entities only in the model.

• Move/Copy Entities
  to perform translations, rotations and rototranslations
   
• Scale Entities
  to perform scaling and stretching
   

Associativity is a characteristic which can be assigned to a entity so that it will retain a link to the reference entities it derives from. Therefore in associative transformations, if you modify the reference entities, the transformed entities will also get modified accordingly.

Move/Copy Entities:

• In case of translation, for example:
• • If the translation is defined by picking two parametric points, in case the points should be subsequently moved, the translated entities will move accordingly.
  • If the translation is defined through coordinates obtained with the Adaptive Measure method, should the reference entities used within the latter change, the transformed entities will be changed accordingly.
    

    The associative translation (defined by picking two parametric points) has been graphically shown in the succeeding images.
    
    

• In case of rotation, for example:
• • If the selected axis of rotation is parametric, in case it should be subsequently moved, the rotated entities will be changed accordingly.
  • If the angle of rotation is defined through the Adaptive Measure mechanism and the reference entities are subsequently moved, the rotated entities will be moved accordingly.
  
  

  Parametric Entities as Results of Rototranslations Note that any copy of a parametric entity obtained by applying a rototranslation to the original one is a parametric entity as well.

Scale Entities:

• In case of scaling, for example:
• • If the scale is isotropic and is defined through a variable or through the Adaptive Measure mechanism, if the reference entities change, the scaled entities will be changed accordingly.
  • If the scale is anisotropic and the selected axis is parametric, in case the latter should change, the scaled entities will be changed accordingly.
    This behaviour has been graphically shown in the succeeding images.