Overview

Welcome to the Wireframe and Surface User's Guide !
This guide is intended for users who need to become quickly familiar with the product.

This overview provides the following information:
Wireframe and Surface in a Nutshell Before Reading this Guide Getting the Most Out of this Guide Accessing Sample Documents Conventions Used in this Guide
Wireframe and Surface in a Nutshell
The Wireframe and Surface workbench allows you to create wireframe construction elements during preliminary design and enrich existing 3D mechanical part design with wireframe and basic surface features. As a complement to Part Design, this product meets the requirements of solids-based hybrid modeling. The features-based approach offers a productive and intuitive design environment to capture and re-use design methodologies and specifications. As a scalable product, Wireframe and Surface can be used in cooperation with companion products such as Part Design, Assembly Design and Generative Drafting. The widest application portfolio in the industry is also accessible through interoperability with CATIA Solutions Version 4 to enable support of the full product development process from initial concept to product in operation. The Wireframe and Surface User's Guide has been designed to show you how to create and edit wireframe and surface features as well as hybrid parts. There are often several ways to reach the final result. This guide aims at illustrating these various possibilities.
Before Reading this Guide
Before reading this guide, you should be familiar with basic Version 5 concepts such as document windows, standard and view toolbars. Therefore, we recommend that you read the Infrastructure User's Guide that describes generic capabilities common to all Version 5 products. It also describes the general layout of V5 and the interoperability between workbenches. You may also like to read the following complementary product guides: Part Design User's Guide Assembly Design User's Guide
Getting the Most Out of this Guide
To get the most out of this guide, we suggest that you start reading and performing the step-by-step Getting Started tutorial. This tutorial will show you how create a basic part. Once you have finished, you should move on to the Basic Tasks and Advanced Tasks sections, which deal with handling all the product functions. The Workbench Description section, which describes the Wireframe and Surface Design workbench, will also certainly prove useful. Navigating in the Split View mode is recommended. This mode offers a framed layout allowing direct access from the table of contents to the information.
Accessing Sample Documents
To perform the scenarios, sample documents are provided all along this documentation. For more information on accessing sample documents, refer to Accessing Sample Documents in the Infrastructure User's Guide.