Geometry Overview & CAD Editing

Build and edit the slope cross-section with the on-canvas CAD geometry editor. All model geometry is drawn directly on the canvas: you place and edit entities with the mouse, refine them with snapping aids, and edit exact coordinates in the properties pane when precision matters.

Drawable entities

A model is assembled from the entities below. Each is drawn from the Geometry panel, and each has its own dedicated tools and clear command.

Soil Profile mode

Soil Profile mode is useful when several section groups share a stratigraphic profile. Configure the rectangular Profile Extents, draw profile-boundary polylines through it, and assign a material to every resulting profile region. Each group's external boundary selects the part of that profile used for its model. Area inside the external boundary but outside the profile extents uses the default material.

The project-wide mode switch rebuilds material regions and makes existing scenario results stale. Compute is blocked when profile coverage inside the extents is incomplete or when a generated region does not have a valid material assignment.

Drawing an entity

Each entity type has a matching Add / Done pair of commands plus a Clear command in the Geometry panel.

1. Click the Add command for the entity (for example, Draw Boundary or Add Weak Layer).
2. Click on the canvas to place vertices. Snapping (see below) places them on existing geometry, grid points and preferred angles.
3. Click Done (or Close for closed shapes), press Enter or double-click to finish the entity. Press Escape to cancel it.

To place a vertex at an exact position, draw it nearby and then edit its coordinates (see Editing exact coordinates below). To remove every entity of a type, use its Clear command (for example, Clear Material Boundaries or Clear Tension Cracks).

Editing geometry

Switch to Edit Vertices mode to modify existing geometry. The edit tools are:

Trim and Extend

Trim and Extend reshape Material Boundaries, Water Tables, Piezo Lines, Weak Layers and other open domain lines, and CAD lines, polylines and polygons, as CAD TRIM and EXTEND do. Any domain line or boundary, or a CAD line, polyline or polygon, can be the line to trim to or extend to.

• Trim: right-click the line to trim, on the part to remove, and choose Trim. Then select the object to trim to. Hovering over it shows the part that would go as a dashed line; click to trim. The part is cut back to the nearest crossings, so an overshooting end (for example a coal seam running past the BUTE surface) stops where it meets the edge, a part between two crossings splits the line in two, and a polygon crossed twice opens into a polyline. When the line does not cross an open edge there, the edge's two end segments are projected beyond its ends and the line is trimmed where it crosses them; the projections are previewed dashed too, with a small circle at each cut.
• Extend: right-click an open line and choose Extend, then click the end vertex to extend from, then the object to extend to. Hovering over it shows the extension as a dashed line; click to extend. The end moves along its end segment to the first point where it meets the object. When it would miss an open line, it extends to where it meets the projection of one of that line's end segments instead: the projected segment is previewed dashed too, with a small circle where the two meet.

Trim and Extend in the Draw section of the geometry dock start the same tools with nothing chosen: click the line to trim (on the part to remove) or to extend first. Each step's prompt is shown in the console. Each trim or extend is one undo step, and material regions are rebuilt as for any other boundary edit, keeping their materials unless the edit closes a new region. Right-click or press Esc to leave the tool. In the console, geometry.trim and geometry.extend do the same.

Offset

Offset places copies of a line a set distance away. It works on Material Boundaries, Profile Boundaries, Piezo Lines, Weak Layers and Anisotropic Surfaces, and on CAD lines, polylines and polygons.

1. Right-click the line and choose Offset....
2. Type the offset distance in metres and press Enter or click OK.
3. Move the cursor to the side of the line to offset to. A dashed preview shows where the copy will go. By default the copy moves at right angles to the line's average direction. This is the length-weighted average of its segments, each taken in the same sense so that segments running back the other way don't cancel out.
4. Click to place the copy. Each further click offsets the last copy again, so three clicks with a 10 m distance place copies 10, 20 and 30 m away.
5. Right-click or press Esc to leave the tool.

To offset in a direction of your own, tick Specify Offset Direction in the dialog. Then click twice to give the direction before placing copies. After the first click, an arrow follows the cursor to show the direction. Both clicks use the snaps that are switched on. Copies are added as if drawn: a Material Boundary copy is clipped to the External Boundary, regions keep their materials, and a Weak Layer copy keeps its material. Each copy is one undo step. In the console, geometry.offset does the same.

Editing exact coordinates

To set a vertex to an exact position, open the vertex editor, type the X and Y values, and apply. You can also edit coordinates in the Coordinates tab of the properties pane, which lists every vertex of the selected entity in an editable table.

Assigning materials

Right-click a region and choose Assign Material, then pick a material from the submenu. You can also use the Assign Material edit tool and click the target region.

Undo and the Edit menu

Press Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z) to undo the most recent geometry change, and Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y to redo it. History is retained for a limited number of steps.

The Edit menu holds Undo and Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Duplicate and Delete for the selected drawing objects, and Select All and Deselect. Each shows its shortcut (Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Delete, Ctrl+A) and is unavailable when it has nothing to act on or while an analysis runs. Pasted and duplicated objects land 1 m right of and above their source. Inside a text field these keys edit the text instead.

Snapping

Snapping helps you place vertices precisely against existing geometry and reference lines. Each snap mode can be toggled independently:

An angle snap mode is also available; it snaps the current segment to a list of preferred angles. The default angle list is 0, 5.71, 10, 20, 30, 37, 40, 42, 45, 65, 70, 80, 90 degrees. Edit it from the Snap Angles editor in the canvas status bar by typing a comma-separated list of angles.

The grid spacing defaults to 1, and the grid can be shown or hidden independently of grid snapping.

Visibility and locking

Every entity carries independent visible and locked flags, toggled from the inspector layers sidebar. Hidden entities are not drawn; locked entities cannot be selected or edited until unlocked.