nTopology 3.32 is here! This release features the Notebook Outline that lets you view the blocks in your notebook from a high level and quickly select and navigate them. Continue reading below to see further updates and bug fixes. As with every release, nTopology’s dedicated support team is ready to answer your questions. Please visit support.ntopology.com to access helpful tutorials and support articles. Table of Contents
Notebook Outline
We’ve added a major enhancement to our application, the Notebook Outline. The Outline lets you view the blocks in your notebook from a high level and quickly select and navigate them (shown above).
The Outline lives in a left-hand sidebar that can be expanded and collapsed by selecting the icon at the top-left of the Notebook (shown below).
In addition to quickly navigating to blocks, the Outline provides a visual tracing for where variables are used in your Notebook. When you select a block in the Outline, a bright blue highlight will appear on that block. If that block is a variable instanced within another block, a duller blue highlight will appear on the block that references it. In the below video, “Y Bound Lengths” is a variable being used within “Remapped Gyroid,” as indicated by the dull blue highlight.
Usage Improvements
- Adding a block via Context Search on variable now adds the new block below the original block instead of above.
- The load time of files with FE Meshes is now significantly faster, with a 40-60% reduction with this release.
- We improved the Autosave setting. It is now on by default and properly auto-saves your file.
Block Updates
- We improved the CAD Body from Implicit Body (Beta) block to work on models containing thin ribbing on curved surfaces. Before 3.32, the resulting CAD Part was suboptimal–either self-intersections or dents/divots were present. We have fixed it in 3.32. However, the result contains roughly 5% more CAD Faces.
A CAD Part from an implicit model of ribbing on a thin, curved surface. This view appears okay. However, the image below shows a dent.
The same model’s back view shows the indentation in the CAD Part.
In 3.32, the beta block improvements:
Bug Fixes
- We fixed an issue where trying to exit a modified nTopology file would not prompt you to save your changes.
- We fixed an issue importing a VDB file that generated a Deprecated Import Voxel Grid block.
- We fixed an issue where the tooltip for a variable block does not show on the Type icon dropdown when the variable is empty.
- We fixed an issue where exiting and saving nTopology with an edited Custom Block did not automatically save the edited Custom Block upon reopening.
- We fixed an issue where the Update With command within the Imported Block menu would not work for nested Custom Blocks.
- We fixed an issue when specified optional Frames were on Boundary Conditions objects. In previous releases, the coordinate transformation defined by the Frame would be applied to every Boundary Condition with the same FE Boundary input, regardless of provided Frame input.
- We fixed an issue causing the Surface Area from Body block to output 0.00m² when the input to the block was a Section Body from a Cylindrical TPMS lattice.