Exploding Patterns 

During your design you may decide to perform specific operations on a certain number of instances created via the Pattern command. Before performing such operations, you need to explode your pattern, which makes each instance independent.

This task shows you how to delete a pattern while keeping geometry.
The Explode command can be applied to patterns created with features and feature lists, not with bodies. This capability is available in P2 mode only.

Open the RectangularPattern.CATPart document and perform a basic pattern.

  1. Right-click the pattern you want to explode. 

  2. Select the RectPattern.1object > Explode... contextual command.
    You obtain as many features in the specification tree as there were instances. The geometry remains unchanged.

Note that:

  • if the original element you patterned contains a dress-up feature, for instance a fillet, exploding the pattern does not delete the fillet defined on each instance. 
  • However, if a dress-up feature has been defined on a pattern instance, exploding the pattern deletes this dress-up feature.
  • You cannot pattern wireframe, surface, volume elements nor current solids.

  1. You can edit pockets individually. For example, you can move them to the location of your choice.