Version 18.

0 - Tutorial
 Materialise 3-matic 18.0 – Tutorial – L-103210-01

Content
Content .......................................................................................................................... 1
/ General introduction ......................................................................................... 4
Interface ........................................................................................................................ 5
Object Tree and entities................................................................................................. 6
Quick search operations ................................................................................................ 8
Creating a custom tab.................................................................................................... 8
View orientation in the Work Area .................................................................................. 9
Video tutorials 3-matic ..................................................................................................10
Scripting .......................................................................................................................10
/ Chapter 1: Import/Export ................................................................................ 11
Exercise 1: Import STLs ...............................................................................................11
Exercise 2: Import a Mimics project file .........................................................................11
Exercise 3: Import a CAD file of a heart valve ...............................................................12
Exercise 4: Import and clean-up of cushion panel file ...................................................13
Introduction to Point Cloud ....................................................................................................... 13
Task 1: Point cloud meshing .................................................................................................... 13
Task 2: Scan fixing ................................................................................................................... 14
Exercise 5: Export 3D PDF ...........................................................................................15
/ Chapter 2: Basic .............................................................................................. 18
Exercise 1: Align the heart valve with the aorta.............................................................18
/ Chapter 3: Analyze .......................................................................................... 21
Exercise 1: Wall Thickness Analysis .............................................................................21
Exercise 2: Curvature Analysis .....................................................................................22
Exercise 3: Part Comparison Analysis ..........................................................................23
Exercise 4: Measure and analyze using fitted primitives ...............................................25
/ Chapter 4: Design ............................................................................................ 29
Exercise 1: Give the aorta a thickness for additive manufacturing ................................29
Exercise 2: Aneurysm design .......................................................................................30
Exercise 3: Designing an acetabular cup ......................................................................31
Exercise 4: Create a skin graft for nose reconstruction .................................................40
Exercise 5: Use seams to reduce the amount of stretch on the alar lobule subunit .......48
Exercise 6: Creating a Cardiovascular Benchtop Model ...............................................51
Task 1: Clean and Optimize the Geometry .............................................................................. 52
Task 2: Add a Thickness and Trim the Model .......................................................................... 52
Task 3: Design Base and Supports .......................................................................................... 53
Task 4: Add a flange to the benchtop model ............................................................................ 58
Task 5: Apply Finishing Touches and Export ........................................................................... 60
Exercise 7: Design of a patient-specific cranial plate ....................................................63
Task 1: Indicate the outline of the gap ...................................................................................... 64
Task 2: Mirror the healthy geometry and create a guiding line ................................................ 66
Task 3: Creation of the cranial plate ......................................................................................... 69
Task 4: Removing the undercuts .............................................................................................. 73
Task 5: Creating a smooth edge and chamfered edge ............................................................ 74
Task 6: Creating suture holes ................................................................................................... 75
Exercise 8: Design changes and labeling on a bottle ....................................................78
Task 1: Creating a sketch and adding design changes ............................................................ 78
Task 2: Converting the 2D sketch design to a 3D part ............................................................. 83
Task 3: Labeling ....................................................................................................................... 84
Exercise 9: Cooling channel design on a mold..............................................................86
Task 1: Creating a hollow part .................................................................................................. 86
Task 2: Creation of centerline curves ....................................................................................... 87
Task 3: Distance to curve check ............................................................................................... 90

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Task 4: Creating a cooling channel .......................................................................................... 91

Exercise 10: Design a tibial osteotomy guide. ...............................................................93
Task 1: Create Guide Bases .................................................................................................... 93
Task 2: Create a Cut Slot ......................................................................................................... 95
Task 3: Create a flange ............................................................................................................ 96
Task 4: Create Multiple Guiding Tubes .................................................................................... 96
Task 5: Create a Bridge ............................................................................................................ 98
Task 6: Finalize Guide Design .................................................................................................. 98
/ Chapter 5: Remesh ........................................................................................ 101
Basic explanation of the finite element method ...........................................................101
Element quality ...........................................................................................................101
Typical Remesh workflow ...........................................................................................102
Tips and tricks ............................................................................................................103
Exercise 1: Introduction to the workflow ......................................................................103
Task 1: Import and visualize the mesh ................................................................................... 103
Task 2: Reduce the details of the anatomical part ................................................................. 104
Task 3: Remesh the surface elements ................................................................................... 105
Task 4: Generate the volume mesh ....................................................................................... 105
Task 5: Material assignment ................................................................................................... 106
Exercise 2: Inspect mesh quality.................................................................................110
Task 1: Inspect the quality of the surface mesh ..................................................................... 111
Task 2: Remesh the surface elements ................................................................................... 112
Task 3: Further improve the mesh by Smoothing .................................................................. 113
Task 4: Generate a Tet10 volume mesh ................................................................................ 114
Task 5: Inspect the quality of the volume mesh ..................................................................... 115
Exercise 3: Local mesh refinement .............................................................................115
Task 1: Surface refinement .................................................................................................... 115
Task 2: Volume refinement ..................................................................................................... 118
Exercise 4: Gradient Remesh .....................................................................................119
Exercise 5: Creating a Midplane mesh .......................................................................120
Non-manifold Assembly ..............................................................................................122
Exercise 6: Creating Non-manifold Assembly for anatomical parts .............................122
Task 1: Generate Non-manifold Assembly in Mimics ............................................................. 123
Task 2: Reduce details and Remesh the surface elements ................................................... 124
Task 3: Create volume mesh .................................................................................................. 126
Task 4: Material assignment ................................................................................................... 127
Exercise 7: Creating Non-manifold Assembly for intersecting parts ............................128
Exercise 8: Creating a Non-manifold Assembly with a grid .........................................132
Task 1: Creating the non-manifold assembly ......................................................................... 132
Task 2: Reducing the number of triangles .............................................................................. 132
Exercise 9: Improving the accuracy of the grid-based method ....................................134
Task 1: Creating the non-manifold assembly ......................................................................... 134
Task 2: Improving the accuracy of the screw ......................................................................... 135
Task 3: Dealing with intersecting triangles ............................................................................. 136
Task 4: Improving the mesh ................................................................................................... 138
Task 5: Creating volume mesh and identifying bad volume elements ................................... 140
Exercise 10: Exporting and importing the mesh into a solver program ........................141
Task 1: Generating a mesh with material properties .............................................................. 141
Task 2: Exporting a file to ANSYS .......................................................................................... 145
Task 3: Importing into ANSYS 2021 R2 and solving .............................................................. 146
Task 4: Use ACT to convert surface structures in Ansys 2021 R2 ........................................ 149
Task 5: Importing into ANSYS® Workbench™ version 14.0 or earlier .................................. 152
Task 6: Exporting a file to ABAQUS/CAETM ........................................................................... 152
Task 7: Importing into ABAQUS/CAETM and solving .............................................................. 153
Task 8: Exporting reference points from 3-matic to ABAQUS/CAE TM ................................... 159

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Exporting a file to COMSOL Multiphysics® ............................................................................. 161

Exporting a file to MSC Patran®.............................................................................................. 162
/ Chapter 6: Texturing ..................................................................................... 164
Introduction to the Texturing module...........................................................................164
Exercise 1: Applying a texture on a pedal. ..................................................................164
Task 1: Creating a UV Map .................................................................................................... 164
Task 2: Creating a 2D texture ................................................................................................. 165
Task 3: Converting the 2D texture to a 3D texture ................................................................. 168
Exercise 2: Applying leather texture on a cover model................................................169
Task 1: Creating UV Map ....................................................................................................... 169
Task 2: Applying leather texture on the UV Map .................................................................... 171
Task 3: Showing the 3D Preview for the leather textures with offsets ................................... 173
/ Chapter 7: Topology optimization ............................................................... 175
Exercise 1: Import and clean-up of raw data ...............................................................175
Task 1: Surface manipulation of raw topology data ............................................................... 175
Task 2: Redesign and export of CAD-like entities .................................................................. 179
/ Chapter 8: Lattice .......................................................................................... 182
Exercise 1: Creating a porous bone prosthesis ...........................................................182
Task 1: Prepare femur prosthesis .......................................................................................... 182
Task 2: Create porous structure ............................................................................................. 183
Task 3: Convert lattice to organic mesh ................................................................................. 184
Exercise 2: Design of a filter using lattice structures ...................................................185
Task 1: Creating a quad based lattice .................................................................................... 185
Task 2: Creating a unit cell based lattice ................................................................................ 187
Task 3: Make graph connections ............................................................................................ 188
Task 4: Assign graph properties ............................................................................................. 190
Task 5: Create regular mesh from graphs (Optional) ............................................................. 192
/ Chapter 9: Reverse Engineering .................................................................. 193
Exercise 1: Anatomical Reverse Engineering .............................................................193
Exercise 2: CAD link ...................................................................................................194
/ Chapter 10: Statistical Shape Model ............................................................ 197
General introduction ...................................................................................................197
Tips and tricks ............................................................................................................197
Exercise 1: Creating a statistical shape model from the femur ....................................198
Task 1: Warp the original parts using a template part ............................................................ 198
Task 2: Create a statistical shape model and recreate a patient ........................................... 199

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/ General introduction

Materialise 3-matic is a unique software that combines CAD tools with pre-processing (meshing)
capabilities. To do so, it works on triangulated (STL) files.

For this reason, it is very suitable for handling organic/freeform 3D data, like the anatomical data coming
from the segmentation of medical images (from Materialise Mimics). We call it Anatomical CAD.
Import your anatomical data in Materialise 3-matic to start doing real Engineering on Anatomy, like
thorough 3D measurements and analyses, design an implant or surgical guide within a research context,
or prepare the mesh for finite element modeling.

Using powerful tools, 3-matic also allows users to perform topology optimization clean up, design and
combine different types of lattice structures, create 3D textures and much more. In combination with
Materialise build processors, 3-matic gives a possibility to slice even very complex lattice structures by
consuming much less memory than would otherwise be needed. Since Materialise 3-matic can import
CAD data, but also do reverse engineering of anatomical to CAD data, it is perfectly complementary to
your CAD package.

NOTICE ON INTENDED USE: Materialise 3-matic is not a medical device.

All datasets used in this tutorial are stored in C:\Program Files\Materialise\3-matic 18.0 (x64)\DemoFiles
or in a similar location, depending on the selected destination folder during installation.

From version 10.0 on, Materialise 3-matic remembers for you. This means that when opening an
operation page, previously remembered parameter values are available for further use. The below
exercises sometimes refer to the default parameter settings. To use these default parameter settings,
you can reset all of them by going to Options & Help > Reset Current Operation Defaults.

© 2023 Materialise N.V. All rights reserved.

Materialise, the Materialise logo and the Mimics and 3-matic product names are trademarks of
Materialise NV.

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Interface
Open 3-matic to explore its interface.
• (1) The Ribbon tabs contain all the functions to modify the objects in your project.
• (2) The Main Toolbar can be used to change the visualizations of the models.
• (3) The Quick Access Toolbar can be used to import or save project, and to change the
preferences setting.
• (4) The Object Tree provides a structured overview of the objects that are currently
loaded in 3-matic.
• (5) The Properties Tab contains three sections.
i. Properties: Several properties and statistics of a part, surface, texture or any
other entity can be viewed in the Properties Tab.
ii. Operations: In Operations, the parameters for the currently active operation can
be filled in.
iii. Console: The Console makes it possible to quickly execute/test 3-matic API
functions using the Python language.
• (6) Parameters options.
i. Expert mode ON – show additional expert options in the operation page. These
options will be highlighted in yellow.
ii. Remember parameters ON – entered and applied parameters (except entities)
in most operations will be kept when starting the same operation next time.
• (7) Logger shows information of performed actions as well as notifications, warnings
and sometimes other additional information.
• (8) Quick Search allows searching for a desired function by typing (part of) its name.
• (9) View Orientation Cube shows the current view plane of the Work Area. Clicking on
a different plane will switch the camera to orient itself perpendicular to the selected
plane.

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Object Tree and entities

The Object Tree provides a structured overview of the objects currently open in 3-matic.
• (1) The Section List makes it possible to look inside a part by using a section on your
part. The Position of the section can be changed in the Properties Tab. To hide one
side of your part, activate the Clip function.
• (2) The Metadata makes it possible to store additional text info (Metadata). It might be
filled automatically by some software or edited manually by the user.
• (3) The Part information, accessed by clicking the small '+’ next to it, can contain
multiple entities (Object Coordinate System, Metadata, Surfaces, Curves, …).
• Entity names can be modified by focusing on the entity and clicking the ‘F2’ keyboard
shortcut key.

It is possible to right-click on any level and on any entity in the Part Information. A context menu will pop
up, which has several operations available.

A similar context menu can be opened in the work area. Left-click on the entity of interest and select it
from the list. Right-click on the selected entity to open the context menu.

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Note that it is possible to assign shortcut keys to the most used operations from the context menu. To
do so, go to Options and Help > Customize User Interface, then click on Keyboard. In the Context Menu
Category, you can for example assign shortcut keys to Show, Hide, and several levels of Transparency.

The entities in the Object Tree can be reordered in any order of your preference, through drag and drop
functionality. One or more objects can be simultaneously dragged up, down, and inside or outside
groups. This can be especially convenient for maintaining a good overview of your project when working
with many objects. In order to group objects, simply right-click on them and select Create Group, or
press the shortcut key assigned to this action (Ctrl+G in the screenshot below).

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Quick search operations

When a short string (characters) is typed into the input field of the Quick search feature, a list of
suggestions that matches the input string is shown. Clicking on any of the suggestions will launch the
operation. The operations are shown based on their respective position in the ribbon structure, e.g. Align
(tab name), Alignment (Group name), Align (the operation name).

Creating a custom tab

If you would like to set up your own custom tab, which for example contains only the tools that you need
for a specific workflow in a certain order, you can click the ‘+’ in the top right of the user interface. From
there, if you click on ‘Customize User Interface’, then ‘Customize Ribbon’, you can add and remove
tools from your new tab. To do so, choose the command(s) that you want to add from the left hand side
of the window, and click ‘Add’ to place them into the new tab. In the example shown below, ‘Create

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Curve’, ‘Isocurves’, and ‘Uniform Offset’ have been added to the new tab. The tab can be renamed, and
tools can also be grouped by clicking ‘New Group’.

Additionally, while the ‘Customize’ window is open, you can drag and drop commands from any tab to
a location of your choice. In the example shown below, ‘Wrap’ has been moved from the Thickness
group to the Boolean group in the Design tab.

View orientation in the Work Area

When the mouse hovers on any of the planes, the plane will be highlighted with the name of the plane
shown in a tooltip. Clicking on this plane will change the camera view to the specified plane.

When the view is on a planar view, hovering the mouse on the plane will show 4 arrows on the 4 sides
of the square. Clicking on any of these arrows will rotate the view 90 degrees in the specified direction.

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To set the view to the Isometric view click on the origin of the box.

Video tutorials 3-matic

There are multiple video tutorials of 3-matic, visualizing the steps in several workflows via a combination
of presentation and demonstration.
Video tutorials on non-medical applications are accessible via the Materialise Software Academy:
[Link]

For video tutorials on medical applications, visit our Materialise Medical Academy:
[Link]

Scripting
3-matic supports Python scripting. The 3-matic Python API makes it possible to script many 3-matic
features. You can write your own Python scripts and call the features from 3-matic. This allows you to
automate your workflow. 3-matic comes with instructions for installing Python and includes a script editor
and a scripting console. More information can be found in the Scripting Guide. Open 3-matic and go to
Options & Help > Scripting Guide.

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/ Chapter 1: Import/Export
In this chapter, you will learn how to use the various import and export options in 3-matic.

Exercise 1: Import STLs

1. Open a new 3-matic project.

Click on Import Part, select the STLs of the aorta (Aorta1 and Aorta2) and import them
together. During import, Split surfaces with an angle of 45°. This will make separate surfaces
of all inlets and outlets.
They are positioned in the same location since they originate from the same dataset. No
registration is necessary.

Exercise 2: Import a Mimics project file

1. Open 3-matic. In the Quick Access toolbar, select Import Part and browse to the DemoFiles
folder in the installation folder and select the “[Link]” for the parts in the file to
be imported. The 3D objects are loaded into your 3-matic project.

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Note: if the Mimics project contains objects that are grouped, the groups will be maintained upon
importing the project into 3-matic.

Exercise 3: Import a CAD file of a heart valve

In case you want to combine the STL model of the aorta with a heart valve design from a CAD package,
you can import the IGES file of this valve. The valve used in this exercise is NOT a real heart valve; it is
redesigned to resemble a common valve.
The IGES file is triangulated upon import.

1. Go to File > Import Part (Ctrl + L) and browse for heart [Link] file.

2. In the Import dialog, enable Fix normals and Stitch automatic.

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Exercise 4: Import and clean-up of cushion panel file

Introduction to Point Cloud

The point cloud functionality makes it possible to modify point clouds in 3-matic and to convert them to
STL files. This includes the import & export of different point cloud formats. Furthermore, a range of
tools is available to modify point clouds by marking, sub sampling, noise reduction, splitting… to
improve the quality of the point cloud.

Special tools are available for registration of multiple point clouds or STLs and to glue different
(overlapping) meshes, originating from different point clouds, into one solid mesh.

Task 1: Point cloud meshing

1. Go to File > Import Part > DemoFiles > Cushion_Panel.asc. An import dialog box appears.
The default settings are fine and can be kept. Click OK to import the point cloud. The point
cloud is imported in 3-matic and visualized in the 3D view. The properties of the point cloud
reveal that it consists out of 50474 points.

2. Open the Subsample operation from the Point Cloud tab. This operation reduces the
number of points but also optimizes the point distribution. Select the Cushion_Panel as
Entities and set the Reduce point to (%) parameter to 75. The number of points is reduced
to 36709.

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3. Go to the Point Cloud tab and select the Mesh Data operation. This operation will create
an STL mesh from any selected point cloud. Apply it with the default settings. As a result, a
part called ‘Cushion_Panel’ will be created. Hide the point cloud by highlighting it in the
object tree and right-clicking on it in order to open the context menu. Select Hide.

Task 2: Scan fixing

Typically, borders in a scanned object will not be smooth and accurate. To reconstruct these features,
3-matic offers various fixing possibilities. In this case, the circular holes will be refined with the use of
the slot restoration tool.

1. Go to the Fix tab and open the Slot Restoration operation. Select one of the circular
bad contours for the operation. By default, the operation will fit a perfect circle. If desired,
the parameters for this outline can still be changed.

Because the triangles at a border of the scan are typically already noisy and less accurate,
the slot restoration operation offers the possibility to remove these border triangles via the
Expand hole parameter. Set the Hole fill parameters as shown below.

2. Repeat this operation for the other holes as well. Merge all the created surfaces in order to
get a nice-looking result.

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Exercise 5: Export 3D PDF

The goal of this exercise is to export a 3D PDF along with measurements, analytical primitives, and
annotations created on the entity. The 3D PDF serves as an effective tool for communication of results
with e.g. a physician or a colleague. It is possible to personalize the 3D PDF by including a header,
footer, or both.

1. File > Open Project > DemoFiles > Mitral [Link].

2. Click on 3D PDF from the Export options under the File. Changing the Header and Footer
parameter to Both in the Page Setup section opens the following operation page.

3. In the Entities selection box, choose all the objects that need to be shown in the exported 3D
PDF from the Object Tree. In this project we would like to show in the 3D PDF the distance
between the Mitral valve and the Papillary muscle of the heart to evaluate the optimal stent size.

The following objects need to be selected as Entities: Mitral valve surface, Mitral valve plane,
Heart, distance measurement and the annotations Mitral valve plane and Papillary muscle.

4. Choose the Output filename and directory by clicking on the path box.

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5. Click on Image to choose an image or logo for the Header and Footer and change the
parameters according to the image.

6. Click on Apply.

7. Open the resulting 3D PDF.

8. In the left panel of the 3D PDF, the different views are listed. Click on Detailed View to see the
measurements, annotations and analytical primitives created on the exported entity.

9. When hovering the mouse pointer in the 3D area of the PDF, a toolbar will appear from where
different actions can be performed in the 3D PDF, e.g. viewing more details in a cross sectional
view, adding comments, or performing measurements in the 3D PDF.

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/ Chapter 2: Basic
Exercise 1: Align the heart valve with the aorta
If you no longer have the heart valve_faces and Aorta1 objects available in the Object Tree, please
perform Exercises 1 and 3 from Chapter 1 again. The valve and aorta inlet are not yet positioned
correctly with respect to each other. We will now perform this alignment.

1. Go to Align and choose Arc to Arc Align.

2. Fit an Arc on the aorta inlet as the fixed entity. Fit another Arc on the outer surface of the
heart valve as the moving entity. Make sure the arrows are aligned properly, to fit the heart
valve in the right direction.

3. Choose Coincident or Coincident face to face, depending on the direction of the arrows.

4. Use Translate/Rotate (Align Tab) to fine-tune the positioning if necessary. Select the
Object coordinate system to translate.

Now we need to virtually attach the aorta to the valve. Therefore, we will modify the aorta
inlet to fit on the heart valve.

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5. Go to the Fix tab and choose Project Mesh. Select the inlet surface as entity. This may
be easier if you Hide the heart valve first. Method is On selection. As the target entity, select
the outer surface of the valve (Show it first if needed).

6. Apply and the result should look like this:

7. To open the inlet, delete or hide the surface.

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Note: if you would want to prepare this assembly for computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, the
valve would still need to be remeshed and the nodes should be made to match with the connecting
nodes on the aorta.

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/ Chapter 3: Analyze
Exercise 1: Wall Thickness Analysis
To analyze the thickness of the cortical bone, you can run a wall thickness analysis.

1. Import [Link] from Demo Files. Make sure only the Cortical part is shown in
the Work Area (e.g. using Show Only).

Go to Analyze tab > Wall Thickness and select Cortical as the Entity. Set the Maximum wall
thickness to 10.0 mm. A histogram with the wall thickness distribution will be displayed and a
range of colors will be visualized on the Cortical 3D object. The green color represents the
thinner structures, while the red color corresponds to the thicker regions. Feel free to play with
the slider thresholds to obtain a better visualization.

2. Go to the Analyze tab > Measure Analysis Locally and try to Measure the wall thickness
locally.

3. Go to the Export options under File and select Analysis to export the created wall thickness
analysis. Choose the Cortical [Wall Thickness Analysis] from the Object Tree as Entities
and click on Output Directory to choose the folder where the analysis will be exported. Click
apply to export the analysis.

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4. The wall thickness analysis results will be saved in a text file on the selected location.

Exercise 2: Curvature Analysis

For anatomical analysis, or creating a guide design, it might be interesting to analyze the curvature of
the bone. This exercise also uses the [Link] data.

1. In the Analyze tab, click the Curvature button and select the Femur. Choose Maximum
curvature as Analysis Type, Noisy as Mesh Type and set the Fitting radius to 6.0 mm. Apply
the operation.
A histogram with the curvature distribution is displayed and the 3D object is represented in
a range of colors. The blue color represents the regions with local convexity, while the red
color corresponds to areas of concavity.

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2. Try to Measure the Analysis Locally.

Exercise 3: Part Comparison Analysis

1. Import Aorta1 and Aorta2 from the Demo Files and Split surfaces with 45° (refer to Chapter
1: Import – Exercise 1).
2. Go to the Analyze > Part Comparison to compare the aorta at systole (Aorta2) with the
aorta at diastole (Aorta1).

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3. Set the Histogram range from -3 mm to 3 mm.

4. Try to Measure the Analysis Locally (Analyze tab).

5. Select Segmentation from the Analysis Tools group under the Analyze tab to segment
the analysis results in the defined range. The following operation will be opened.

6. Choose Aorta2 as Entity [Part Comparison Analysis].

7. Select Histogram range between -3.0000 and 3.0000.

8. Choose other parameters as shown in the image above and press Apply.

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9. The surfaces of the object are separated according to the ranges defined during the
Segmentation operation. Use the Show/Hide option to visualize the respective surfaces.

The Segmentation operation can be used in a similar way for segmenting the other analyses.

Exercise 4: Measure and analyze using fitted primitives

1. Go back to the femur imported for the Exercise 2: Curvature analysis. Click on the
Rectangular button in the Mark tab and select the femur head of the Femur object. To make
sure that the triangles are marked through the femur head, hold the SHIFT button whilst
selecting the femur head.

2. In Design tab > Analytical, select Sphere function from the dropdown and set the Method
parameter to Fit sphere. Press Apply.

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3. Click on Mark > Unmark All.

4. Click on the Rectangular button in the Mark tab and select the femur shaft of the Femur
object. Hold the SHIFT button to mark the triangles through the object.

5. In the Design tab > Analytical, select the Line function from the dropdown list. Choose
the Fit ruled surface direction as the Method and the marked triangles as Fitting entities.
Press Apply.

6. Make the resulting line longer by using the Edit Axis function in the Design tab or using
the Interactive edit function in the property page.

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7. Click on Mark > Unmark All.

8. Mark the femur neck using the Rectangular tool in the Mark tab. Make sure you hold the
SHIFT button when you mark the rectangle in the neck.

9. In the Design tab > Analytical, select the Line function from the dropdown list. Choose
the Fit ruled surface direction as the Method and the marked triangles as Fitting entities.
Press Apply.

10. Hide the marked triangles to visualize the created line using Make invisible from the
Mark tab.

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11. Measure the angle between the femoral neck and shaft using the Angle function in
the Measure tab. Select Line to line as the Method and indicate the two lines. Click on
Apply. You may want to Hide the femur first so that you can select the lines more easily.

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/ Chapter 4: Design
Exercise 1: Give the aorta a thickness for additive manufacturing
1. Import Aorta1 from Demo Files into 3-matic with Split Surfaces checked ON (45°).

2. Delete the inlet and outlet surfaces, so that the aorta only consists of the outer surface.
Select all the surfaces that need to be deleted and hit the delete key or right-click them in
the Object Tree to do so.

3. Select Uniform Offset from the Design tab. Select the Aorta part as the entity and select
Solid. A thickness of 1 mm generally works well on most 3D printers. The picture is an
example of this aorta printed on an Objet machine.

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Exercise 2: Aneurysm design

The size and shape of an aneurysm has an impact on the hemodynamic characteristics of the aorta.
It can be interesting to be able to create aneurysm models of different sizes and shapes for
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations.

1. Import Aorta2 from Demo Files. Go to the Finish tab and select Push & Pull. Set the
Push & pull distance to 5.0 mm and the Morphing diameter to 40.0 mm. Hold CTRL to pull
on a part of the surface of the descending aorta. Rotate the aorta to pull on all sides.

Here you see an example of a CFD analysis of blood pressure on a similar aorta:

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Exercise 3: Designing an acetabular cup

In this exercise, we will use a patient-specific model of the anatomy as a basis upon which to design a
customized acetabular implant. The image below shows the result you will be getting when completing
this exercise.

1. Import [Link] from Demo Files (refer to Chapter 1: Import – Exercise 2).

2. We will start by making a copy of the pelvic bone. Select the Pelvis in the Object Tree and
press the Ctrl+D shortcut key to duplicate the part. To make any of the original 3D models
invisible, right-click and select Hide from the context menu.

3. We will now simplify the Pelvis_duplicate. Select the Create Curve function in the Curve
tab, choose Attached Curve as the Curve creation method and enable Split surfaces. Now
draw a curve over the contour of the acetabulum.

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4. Select the inscribed surface and select Delete from the context menu. If it is not possible to
select the surface, make sure the curve is closed (Curve > Close Curve) and use Curve >
Split Surfaces by Curves to separate the surface first.

5. From the Design tab, select the Surface Construction tool. Create a surface based on
the created curve.

6. Click on the Mark Rectangular Area button in the Mark tab and select the femur head
of the Femur object. To make sure that the triangles are marked through the femur head,
hold the SHIFT button whilst selecting the femur head.

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7. In Design tab > Analytical, select the Sphere function from the dropdown.

8. Click on Mark > Unmark All.

9. In the Design tab, click on the Analytical to Mesh button and select the analytical sphere
created in Step 7 as Entities.

10. To give the sphere a thickness, go to the Design tab and click on the Hollow button.
Fill in the parameters as indicated below and click on Apply.

11. To cut the hollow sphere, we will use the Interactive Plane Cut operation. In the Design
tab, select the Interactive Plane Cut button.

Select Sphere as the Entities.

We will fit a plane on the surface created in step 5 and use it as the cutting plane. Select
Use fit plane as the Cut Method. Choose the Manual method. Next, highlight the Fit Plane
selection box and click on the newly created surface in the Work Area. Choose Fit Surface
from the context menu:

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12. Once both the Entities and Fit Plane selection boxes are filled, you will see an interactive
widget appear in the Work Area. You can adjust the position of the Fit Plane by dragging
the circle or axis in the widget interactively. Reposition the plane to the borders of the
acetabular cavity. Make sure the plane does not intersect with the edges of the acetabulum.

Click Apply. The Sphere is cut into two parts. Delete the part that does not intersect with the
pelvis. This finishes the design of the acetabular cup. Next, we will add a flange to the
design.

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13. From the Sketch tab, click on the New button to create a new sketch. Select Fit Plane
as the Method and as the Fitting Entities, select the flat surface of the sphere that resulted
from the Cut operation.

14. Import the outline of the pelvic bone into the sketch and project the contours of the
acetabular cup onto the Sketch. Go to Sketch > Import > Import References, for Projection
select both the Contours of the sphere, and for Outline select the duplicated pelvis. Switch
to the sketch work area to get a better view of the sketch.

15. Create a line sequence on the ischium bone. Click on the Line action button from the
Draw group in the Sketch tab and select Line sequence. Draw three line segments and
press the Escape key to finish.

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16. Add constraints to the line segments. Select the two opposite line segments and click
on the Parallel button in the Constraints group.

17. Set a distance of 7.0 mm between the two parallel line segments.

18. Set a length of 15.0 mm for each of the two parallel line segments.

19. Select Sketch > Circle > Circle Arc (3 Points). Indicate the extremities of the line
segments and the radius of the arc.

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20. Make sure each of the line segments is tangent to the arc. Select one of the parallel
line segments and the circle arc, then select Sketch > Tangent in the Constraints group.

21. We will now project the 2D flange onto the 3D surfaces. From the Curve tab, select the
Project Curve tool. The Entity will be the Sketch-001 and the Target Entity will be the
Pelvis_duplicate 3D object.

We will project according to the normal of the sketch. Highlight the direction parameter, then
expand the sketch in the Object Tree (‘+’ button), expand the Object Coordinate System
and select the Z-axis of the Sketch. If in the preview, the direction arrows are pointing away
from the pelvis, flip the direction by clicking on the toggle direction button. Ensure to check
ON the ‘Create surface sets’ checkbox. Click on Apply to finish the operation.

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22. Merge the surfaces resulting from the projection and separate a copy of the surface to a
new part. Rename it to Flange.

Note: The different surfaces are easily selectable as they are separated in a surface set.

23. Move the surface (Design > Move Surface in the Thickness group) of the Flange object
over 1.0 mm to give it a thickness.

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24. To attach the flange to the acetabular cup, select the Local Boolean operation from
the Design tab. Select the flange as Entity 1 and the outer surface of the sphere as Entity
2. Using the default Local Boolean parameters, the acetabular cup and the flange will be
united.

25. We will use a predefined screw to create the fixation holes. Go to File – Import Part and
choose STL. Select [Link].

26. From the Align tab, select Interactive Positioning. In the Work Area, select the screw
as the Active object and for the Coordinate system, select the Object coordinate system.
You can now drag the screw over the surface of the flange. To create multiple holes,
duplicate the screw and use the Interactive Positioning tool to position them.

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27. To subtract the screws from the flange, go to the Design tab and select Boolean
Subtraction. Select the Sphere with thickness as Entity and the screws as Subtraction
Entities. Uncheck the Preserve color parameter. Click on Apply.

Exercise 4: Create a skin graft for nose reconstruction

In this exercise, you will learn how to use 3-matic to prepare a simple 2D cutting outline of a skin graft
as part of a nose reconstruction surgery preparation.
The first part of the exercise will focus on creating surfaces using the Curve operation. The second part
focuses on the unfolding process and the last part explains the workflow to print the flattened surfaces
to a paper.

1. Open Project [Link] from Demo Files.

2. Divide the right region of the nose into three aesthetic subunits – lateral side wall, alar lobule and
soft tissue facet – using the Curve operation. We will start with the lateral side wall, followed by the
alar lobule and soft tissue facet.

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3. Select the Create Curve operation in the Curve tab, choose Smooth curve as the Curve
creation method. Enable the Close curve, Attract curve, Attach curve and Split surfaces parameters
in the operation page. On the right nose region, draw a curve to define the boundary of the lateral
side wall.

Explanations of the parameters

• Close curve: To connect the start point and end point automatically to form a closed curve.
Tip: Use a double-click to snap the end point to the start point automatically.
• Attract curve: To project the curve segment to the nearest surface within the defined distance
threshold (5mm by default).
• Attached curve: Once the curve is attracted to a surface, Attach curve retriangulates the
surface around the curve to ensure the curve segments coincide with triangle edges.
• Split surfaces: If the curve is closed, Split surfaces will split the enclosed surface to a new
surface.

4. In the Object Tree, rename the newly created surface as “lateral side wall”.

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5. Next, we will repeat the Create Curve step to create the alar lobule subunit. We do not have to
create a closed curve this time, so make sure the Close curve parameter is unchecked. The alar
lobule subunit must be connected to the lateral side wall, therefore, ensure the start and end
points of the new curve are on the lateral side wall curve.

Tip: Press F3 or click on the Filter option and select Curve node and deselect other options to
make sure that only ‘Curve node’ is selectable while placing the start and end points.

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6. In the Object Tree, rename the newly created surface as “alar lobule”.

7. Again, use the same Create Curve parameter settings for the alar lobule – with Close curve
unchecked – to create the soft tissue facet subunit. The soft tissue facet subunit must be connected
to the alar lobule curve, therefore, ensure the start and end points of the new curve are on the alar
lobule curve.

8. In the Object Tree, rename the newly created surface as “soft tissue facet”.

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9. Launch the Unfold operation in Surface tab to flatten the three surfaces.
Turn on Expert mode to show the two advanced parameters Preserve surface connections and
Deformation analysis.

Select the lateral side wall, alar lobule and soft tissue facet as the Entities. Set Preserve surface
area as the Method and check the Preserve surface connections and Deformation analysis boxes.
Click Apply.

10. As a result, the lateral side wall, alar lobule and soft tissue facet are unfolded, and they are located
at the XY-plane of the World Coordinate System with the deformation analysis result showing by
default. A new part is created in the Object Tree.
Notice that the connections of the lateral side wall, alar lobule and soft tissue facet are preserved.

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Note: When more than one surface is selected as Entities and Preserve surface connections is
checked, the total surface area is preserved instead of the individual surfaces’ areas.

11. Inspect the result using the deformation percentage values.

Deformation analysis shows the stretches and compressions that may occur if the flattened
surface were to be refolded back to 3D. Please note that the analysis does not factor in material
properties of any kind. Hence, it should only be used as a reference and not as an absolute
measure of deformations.

Use the Measure Analysis Locally tool in the Analyze tab to see the percentage of deviation
at any given point.

<0% : Surface around this point may experience compression of x% when refolding.
0% : No deviation at this point.
>0 % : Surface around this point may experience stretch of x% when refolding.

12. Next, align the Work Area camera view to the preferred angle for printing to a 2D PDF document
or a 2D printer.

Align the camera view to the normal direction of the flattened surfaces using Indicate View
Orientation in the View tab to ensure the dimension of the flattened surfaces is retained. Select
a point on the surface and select Surface normal from the menu. Notice the camera orients itself

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perpendicular to the flattened surface, or, in other words, parallel to the normal direction of the
flattened surface.

Tip: It is a crucial step to ensure the camera view is oriented perpendicular to the flattened
surface(s). This ensures that the dimensions that are printed to PDF or printer, match with those
in the active Work Area view.

13. Launch the 2D Print operation from the File menu. This print function keeps the ratio at 1:1 which
implies that the dimensions as you see them in the active work area view will be retained.
A rectangle is shown in the center of the Work Area view upon launching the 2D Print operation.
The boundary of the box defines the print area and is based on the selected paper settings.

Note:
• Unzoom the camera view if the print outline is not visible in the Work Area upon launching
the 2D Print operation.
• If the flattened surfaces are not showing in the print area, you can click and hold the mouse
scroll wheel to pan the camera view and bring the surface to the print area.

Click on the Printer Settings button in the operation page. Choose A4 as Paper size and Portrait
as Orientation. Select a printer or PDF output and click OK. Notice the paper settings are reflected
on the 2D Print operation page.

14. Click the Apply button to print. The flattened surfaces are printed according to the current Work
Area view and the position shown in the print area preview in 3-matic.

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15. Using a ruler, you can verify that the dimensions of the flattened surface(s) on the printed paper
or the 2D PDF and in 3-matic are identical.

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Exercise 5: Use seams to reduce the amount of stretch on the alar

lobule subunit
This exercise demonstrates how a seam can be used to reduce the amount of stretch on the alar lobule
subunit. In sewing, a seam indicates where the cut will happen to spread out the fabric. The same
concept applies to the Unfold Surface tool – the selected surface is unfolded at the seams. In 3-matic,
seams are represented in the form of curves. The curves must be attached and attracted to the selected
surfaces to be used as a seam.

1. Open Project [Link] from Demo Files. Show Face_unfolded subunits group.

2. In the Object Tree, expand Face_unfolded-001 and show the Analysis.

Use the Measure Analysis Locally tool in the Analyze tab to inspect the stretching at the
alar lobule surface. (refer to Exercise 4, Step 11 for explanations on Deformation Analysis)

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3. Use the Curve operation to create a curve on the 3D alar lobule surface where the stretch
percentage values are high.

4. Select the Curve operation in the Curve tab, choose Smooth curve as the Curve creation
method. Enable the Attract curve and Attached curve parameters in the operation page. Start
the curve on the contour of the alar lobule and end it slightly over the area where the stretch
values are high.

5. Check the properties of the curve. The Begin point on curve and Fully attached parameters are
checked.

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6. Launch the Unfold Surface operation in the Surface tab. Select the alar lobule surface as
Entities and the curve created in step 2 as Seams.
Turn on Expert mode and select Deformation analysis. Click Apply.
Observe how the stretch values on the alar lobule are significantly lower with the seam, than
before, when the seam was not part of the unfolding process.

Note: The surface mesh quality influences the accuracy of the deformation analysis result. To
obtain a better result, tools to optimize the mesh are available in the Remesh tab as well as
the Fix tab to improve surface mesh quality. Refer to Chapter 5: Remesh for more information.

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Exercise 6: Creating a Cardiovascular Benchtop Model

One growing application in the cardiovascular market is the ability to design and print a benchtop model.
Benchtop models are helpful for many applications including research into stent placement, and flow
studies. The following exercise will explain the steps necessary to create such a model. Its steps are
summarized in the table below.

Task Description Illustration 3-matic functionality

1&2 Prepare model Local smoothing

Hollow

Trim

3. Design base and Sketch

support
Extrude

Create Connections

Convert Analytical
Primitive to Part

4. Add flange to the Import

benchtop model
Arc to Arc Align

Translate/Rotate

Loft

5. Finishing touches Quick Label

Fillet

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Task 1: Clean and Optimize the Geometry

1. Import the [Link] file into 3-matic by clicking File > Import Part. The file is in the DemoFiles
folder.

2. Smooth any rough areas on the surface of the model using the Local Smoothing tool found
under the Finish tab. Click and drag to apply the Local Smoothing.

Task 2: Add a Thickness and Trim the Model

1. Create a shelled structure using the Hollow operation found under the Design Tab. The
vessel wall will be created at 2 mm thick. Press Apply to apply the Hollow operation.

2. Use the Trim tool (Finish Tab) to cut the ends off the inlets and outlets of the aorta. Create
a box around the ends of the inlets and outlets and press apply to perform the Trim. Repeat this
action for all the remaining in- and outlets.

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Task 3: Design Base and Supports

1. Create a new sketch. Go to the Sketch tab, click on the New button. Select the Through 1
point, parallel to a plane method. As the parallel plane, select the ZX-plane of the world
coordinate system. Choose a point on the posterior side of the aneurysm.

2. Translate this sketch at the y-direction of World Coordinate System using the Translate
function under the Align Tab. Move the sketching plane 30 mm so it is not intersecting the
anatomy at any point.

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3. Use Import under the Sketch tab to Import the outline of the aorta onto the sketch. This will
serve as a guide to draw the profile of the base.

4. In Sketch tab, click Line and select Create Line Sequence. Draw a profile of the base in the
Sketch tab. Feel free to be creative but be sure that it completely contains the aorta profile within
the base.

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5. To give the base thickness, Extrude (Design tab) the sketch by 6 mm in one direction. The
result will then have a 6 mm thick base. Hide the Sketch afterward.

6. Now, measure the longest distance between the aorta and the base using Measure
Distance tool in Measure tab. Then, measure the width of the base. These values will be
used later in the Create Connections steps.

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7. Now, connections will be designed to attach the base to the aorta (Design > Create
Connections). Use the Automatic method to generate the cylinders. Indicate acceptable
boundaries for the minimum and maximum radius.
For Maximum length, enter a value that is slightly higher than the longest distance between
aorta and base. In this example, 110mm will be used.
Target distance refers to the distance between connections. Ten connections will be enough
in this example. Based on the width, a distance of 40 mm should produce approximately 10
connections.

8. To add additional connections, use the manual method in the Create Connections operation.
While adding connections, it is possible to interactively edit them by holding down the CTRL
key. To edit a created connection interactively, open the property page for the cylinder and
select Interactive edit. To allow easy editing, make the aorta transparent.

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Check “Convert to solid” once you are satisfied with the preview results and no further editing
is required.

9. Use Analytical to Mesh (in the Design tab) to convert the current analytical connections to
parts.

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Task 4: Add a flange to the benchtop model

1. Import the [Link] in the project (File > Import Part > Flange). Use the default options
(Split surface parameter is unchecked) for the import and click OK to continue.

2. The flange must be attached to the superior side of the AAA model. To first place the flange
at the right position, Arc to Arc Align from the Align tab can be used. Select the inner contour of
the superior end of the AAA model for Arc on fixed entity and the inner contour of the flange (at
the side of the thin band) as Arc on moving entity. To position the flange correctly, choose
Method Coincident face to face (the arrows in the arcs will help to verify how the flange will be
positioned). Press Apply.

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3. The flange is now placed against the AAA model. To make a nice transition between the
AAA model and the flange, there must be a gap between the two parts to make the connection.
With Translate/Rotate (Align tab – shortcut key: G) the flange can be translated in the Z direction
(use Object coordinate system) for approximately 30 mm.

4. With the Loft operation from the Design Tab the flange can be attached to the AAA model
and will give a smooth result. In the operation page choose Type Loft with thickness using
surface and select the side surfaces of the two parts as entities. Leave the Weight 1 and 2 on

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default (exact values can be different depending on the distance between the flange and model)
and select the option Merge.

Task 5: Apply Finishing Touches and Export

1. Put a logo on the top of the aneurysm using Quick Label in the Finish tab. Choose method
Drawing and Import DXF file ‘Logo_Materialise.dxf’. Adjust the scale so that the logo fits on the
vessel. Select Part color in Label color parameter to inherit the part’s color for the logo.
Set Depth to 1 mm.

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2. Use the Fillet tool under the Finish tab to smooth the upper contour of the base. Use a
radius of 1 mm.

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3. Add any other finishing touches to the part including final Local Smoothing, found under the
Finish tab. Export the model as an STL file (File > Export > STL).

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Exercise 7: Design of a patient-specific cranial plate

This exercise explains how to create a patient-specific cranial plate in Materialise 3-matic and involves
six main steps, as outlined in the table below.

Task Description Illustration 3-matic functionality

1 Prepare the skull model and Create Curve

define the outline of the gap

Create Curvature
Analysis

Edit Curve (optional)

2 Mirror the healthy geometry to Sketch

create a guiding curve (optional)
Mirror

Translate/Rotate

Create Spline

3 Create the cranial plate with a Surface Construction

variable thickness
Variable Offset

Uniform Offset

Boolean Subtraction

4 Remove undercuts Undercut Removal

5 Finish the cranial plate by Smooth Edge

smoothing and chamfering the
edges
Chamfer Edge

6 Create suture holes Create Cylinder

Create Isocurves

Create UV map

UV Based
Rectangular Pattern

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Task 1: Indicate the outline of the gap

Before creating the outline for the cranial plate, the skull first needs to be smooth enough. A Wrap and
Smooth operation (Fix tab) will take care of that. A Reduce operation will be applied first, to reduce the
number of triangles, making the model easier to work with.

1. Open the Project [Link].

2. Reduce (Fix tab) the number of triangles. Apply the default settings of the Reduce
feature. To visualize the triangles, the View > Shading Modes functionality can be used
(SHIFT + F3 to quickly enable the triangle edges).

3. Smooth the skull with default parameters (Fix tab).

4. Wrap the skull with the settings shown below (Fix tab):

Now, the outline of the gap needs to be indicated. By doing this, we can use this outline in a further
stage to fill the gap using the Surface Construction operation in the Design tab (or the Create
Cranioplasty Prosthesis in the Design tab). Curve operations will be used to trace the outline.

5. Select the Curve operation in the Curve tab to create a new curve and make sure you select
the Curve creation method as Smooth curve, as shown in the figure below. Check the boxes for
Attract curve and Attach curve. Create a curve around the gap on the wrapped skull.

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It is important to define the curve close to the defect, but in a low curvature area, so that
tangency is maintained between the skull and the implant.

Note: To get a good curve, place the points close enough to each other in high curvature areas.

To assist with identifying areas of high tangency, the Analyze > Curvature tool can be
used. This will project a colour map of the surface curvature on the skull model. This colour
map can be adjusted by adapting the values of the histogram range.

The analysis can be hidden via the context menu of the analysis in the Object Tree.

6. The curve can be closed with the Close operation (Curve tab) if the curve is not yet
closed (can be checked in Properties).

7. If the curve is not completely according to expectations, the Edit Curve tool (Curve tab)
can be used.

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Click on a point on the curve you want to move, a green dot appears. Now you can adjust the
influence distance to limit the area in which the curve can be moved. Now, drag the green
point to the new location and choose Apply to finish the editing operation.

Task 2: Mirror the healthy geometry and create a guiding line

This step is an optional step in the creation of the cranial plate. Guiding lines can be used for the surface
construction operation to “guide” the new surface. This allows you to design a prosthesis that conforms
to the patient’s specific anatomy, and results in a smooth skull-prosthesis transition.

1. First a sketch will be positioned within the sagittal plane. In the Sketch tab, select the New
operation to create a new sketch. Select the Midplane Method and indicate two anatomical
landmark points, such that the sketch will be positioned in the sagittal plane.

Rename the Sketch to ‘Sketch_Sagittal’. The size of the sketch can be adjusted in the
properties by changing the parameters Cell size and Cells count (e.g. 100).

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2. Use Translate/Rotate (shortcut: G) in the Align tab if necessary to adjust the positioning.
The standard views such as front, left and top can be useful during the positioning of the

plane. These views can be found in the main toolbar or in the View tab .

3. Create a mirrored copy of the anatomy using Align > Mirror and use the created sketch as
the Mirror plane. Make sure the option Copy is checked ON.

Rename the mirrored part to ‘Skull_Mirrored’

4. Use Translate/Rotate (in the Align tab) to fine tune the position of the reference (mirrored)
skull.

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5. Duplicate ‘Sketch_Sagittal’ and rename the entity to ‘Sketch_Coronal’.

Rotate the Sketch plane 90°, using Align > Translate/Rotate, such that it is positioned directly
within the defect (and becomes a coronal plane). Tick the Enable snapping checkbox to have
the plane rotate in steps of 90°.

6. Move the rotated plane so that the plane vertically divides the defect in roughly two equal
parts.

7. Import information on the skull, defect curve, and mirror anatomy into the sketch. Go to
Sketch > Import and use Sketch_Coronal as the selection entity and the Skull_wrapped and the
Skull_Mirrored as intersection entities. Redo the operation with the defect curve as intersection
entities.

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The points indicating the intersection of the sketch with the defect curve will serve as the starting
and ending points for the guiding curve.

8. Use Sketch > Spline to sketch a guiding line. The goal is to match the mirrored skull as
closely as possible and use the imported points as beginning and ending points.

Note: To improve the shape of the spline, select the Sketch tab and use the Select and drag operation.

Task 3: Creation of the cranial plate

1. Select the Design > Surface Construction operation, then select the outline curve that was
made in the beginning as Entities and select ‘Sketch_Coronal’ as Guiding lines. Set the
Triangulation to Fine. Select Apply.

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If the resulting surface consist of sharp random triangles, the normal of the outline curve is in
the opposite direction of the surface and should be flipped. To fix this, first undo the Surface
Construction operation and then select the curve from the Object Tree and click on the tool Flip

from the Curve Tab. Afterwards, the surface can be constructed and will result in a tangent
surface.

2. When the surface is created, it is part of the skull. In the next step the surface will be moved to
a separate part. This can be done by first selecting the surface in the Work Area and clicking
the right mouse button. A context menu will appear with different options. Choose Separate >
Move to Part > Create New. After the surface is moved to another part, rename the part to
‘Prosthesis’.

3. The next step is to give a thickness to the surface with the Variable Offset tool from the
Design tab. With this tool, you can locally indicate different values along the surface contour for
the thickness in that area. To know what the thickness should be, measurements can be
performed on the skull like in the example below (use Measure > Distance from Measure tab).

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Choose the parameters from the screenshot below for the Variable Offset (Design tab) operation.
To add contour points to set a different local thickness, select the Points field. Now you can add
a point(s) in the Work Area on the contour of the surface. The local thickness will then be applied
in that location. Click on Add to add the point to the Overview list and repeat this for all the other
points.

Rename the part as ‘Prosthesis’.

The result after this operation can be most easily visualized when the Skull and the Prosthesis
are clipped. This can be done by selecting the Standard Section – Y in the Section List in the
Object Tree. Check on Clip in the properties page and change the Position to get the right view.
Disable the clipping before continuing with the next steps.

4. The resulting prosthesis is not final yet, as it still intersects with the skull and does not fit well
onto the defect area. To solve this, the skull needs to be subtracted from the plate. To ensure a

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smooth fit, a clearance of 0.1 mm is added in this subtraction. This can be done either manually
with the Uniform Offset workflow that is described first, or alternatively, via the Clearance factor
in Boolean Subtraction which is described second.

Duplicate the Skull_wrapped part and rename it as Skull_Offset. Open the tool Uniform
Offset from the Design tab. Select the Skull_Offset as the entity and choose a 0.1 mm external
offset. If redundant shells are present after the offset, these should be removed before
continuing. This can be done by selecting the skull with Shell from the Mark tab, followed by
Invert to highlight the other shells. Press delete to get rid of the marked loose pieces.

For the subtraction of the skull from the prosthesis, open the tool Boolean Subtraction in
the Design tab. Choose as Entity the Prosthesis and as Subtraction Entity the Skull_Offset.

Note: After the subtraction, it is possible that the prosthesis has loose pieces. These can also
be removed by the previously explained steps Mark > Shell → Mark > Invert → Delete.

>
After creating the prosthesis, post-processing can be done to further improve the design of the
prosthesis. Four possibilities are discussed in the following sections:

1. When a prosthesis with a large thickness is created (e.g. if a ceramic material will be used) then
the created prosthesis will have some ‘undercuts’, that blocks a good fitting of the prosthesis.

2. Smoothing the edge to create a smooth contour around the cranial plate surface.

3. Adding a chamfer to the edge to create a smooth bevel around the cranial plate contours.

4. Creating suture holes to allow stitching soft tissues to the implant.

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Task 4: Removing the undercuts

The fitting direction of the prosthesis is defined as the direction in which the prosthesis should be taken
in or out. Depending on this direction, the volume of material that would block a successful fit (undercuts)
is determined. This direction can be any direction, depending on the preferences of the user. In this
case, we will use a direction that corresponds with the average normal direction of the prosthesis. To
obtain this average normal direction, the surface normal of the upper surface will be selected.

1. Use the Remove Undercut operation from the Finish tab to remove obstructing material.
The Direction will be the surface normal of the upper surface. This can be selected in the 3D
view by clicking on the surface, while the Direction parameter in the operation page is
highlighted. Select the following parameters and select Apply.

2. The result of the Remove Undercut operation has multiple surfaces on the side surface. These
can be merged by selecting the surfaces in the Object Tree or Work Area and choosing Merge
in the context menu. Only select the side surfaces as shown on the picture below and not the
top and bottom surfaces to ensure those contours are still available for further finishing.

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Task 5: Creating a smooth edge and chamfered edge

The Smooth and Chamfer Edge operations are found in the Finish tab.

1. Select Smooth Edge (Finish tab). Select the contour of the cranial plate you want to make
smoother. Set the Influence distance, which will be displayed by a green curve around the
contour, as 0.5 mm. Set the Smooth detail: the more detail, the finer the result, but the longer
calculations will take.

The resulting contour is smoother:

2. Select the Chamfer Edge tool (Finish tab). Choose the outer contour of the bottom surface
of the prosthesis. Choose a chamfering distance and apply the operation. This results in a
smooth bevel around the bottom contour as shown in the picture below:

The result can be fine-tuned by using the Trim and Local Smoothing tools of the Finish tab.

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Task 6: Creating suture holes

The last step of this exercise shows how to make suture holes, which could be used to attach soft tissues
to the prosthesis.

1. First a cylinder needs to be created that will be patterned and subtracted from the
prosthesis to create holes. Go to the Design tab and choose the tool Mesh > Cylinder. Select a
radius of 1 mm and choose Point 2 such that the length of the cylinder becomes 14 mm.

In the rest of this task, the UV Map and Texturing modules will be used to pattern copies of the cylinder
across the plate.

2. First, the surface needs to be prepared before the pattern can be placed on the surface.
Use the Isocurves tool from the Curve tab. Select the contour of the outer surface of the plate
as Entity. Set the Direction to Inside and the Interval distance to 2 mm. Make sure Split surfaces
is checked ON. Press Apply.

3. To apply a pattern, a UV map needs to be created first. Go to the UV Map tab and choose
the UV Map tool. Select the newly created outer surface as Entities. Note the naming in your
project might be different. Change the XYZ to UV factor to 7 and uncheck the Launch UV Page
parameter.

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4. To pattern the cylinders on the plate, use the UV Based Rectangular tool under the
Texturing tab. Select the UV Map from the previous step as first input and the cylinder as Pattern
entity. Change the Output pattern to Without deformation and the height offset to -11. Switch
the Desired result to Subtract results. Before pressing Apply, press the Preview button, which
is useful to inspect the result.

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The preview uses a bounding box as an indication of where the cylinders will be placed. Make
sure each pattern entity is completely perforating the plate. If this is not the case, change the
Height offset until all the cylinders perforate the plate. Press Apply.

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Exercise 8: Design changes and labeling on a bottle

The unique forward engineering concept of 3-matic is driven by the numerous CAD & sketcher
operations. The possibility of applying these standard ‘CAD’ functions directly on mesh data opens
different application areas and shortens design cycles tremendously. Examples of possible design
applications are:
• add rounds or reinforcement structures.
• create life-like prototypes by automatically applying a pattern (e.g. logos or perforations) on the
design.
• split up parts in easy-to-build components for easy finishing and assembling afterwards.
• easily add text, labels or even bitmaps (e.g. of logos) to a sketch. These are very useful,
intuitive tools for design modifications or part identification.
• apply morphing operations on freeform data for smooth and slight design changes.

Task 1: Creating a sketch and adding design changes

1. Go to File > Import part > DemoFiles > [Link]. Make sure the Split surfaces checkbox is
unchecked.

The part is not nicely positioned according to the world coordinate center. 3-matic offers the possibility
of calculating the point of gravity but also to calculate the inertia axes of a part. By calculating inertia
axes, these can later be used to position symmetry planes and indicate revolve axes.

2. Open the Design tab, click on Analytical and select Line operation from the dropdown list.
Set the Method to Fit inertia axes and select the Bottle as Fitting entities. As a result, three
inertia axes are created and visualized.

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Note: Instead of creating inertia axes, it is also possible to reposition an object’s coordinate system to
a different coordinate system (e.g. based on inertia axes). This can be done via the ‘Update OCS’
operation in the Align tab.

The created inertia axes can be used to create a sketch plane positioned as a symmetry plane. The
sketch should therefore be created such that the axes of the sketch will match with the inertia axes.

3. Open the Sketch tab and select the New operation. Select the three points of the sketch as
shown in the figure below. Press Apply. A new sketch is now created in the 3D view and the
active scene.

The intersection lines between the part and the sketch can be created in the sketch, for design
purposes.

4. Open the Sketch tab and select the Import operation. As Selection in the Intersection box,
select the Bottle part. Apply the setting as shown below. Afterwards, open the Sketch view tab
next to the Work Area view tab.

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The intersection line (=context curve) of the bottle is now visible in the sketch.

Creating a thickness and other design changes can be executed in the sketch. The resulting sketch will
be used for a revolve operation afterwards, to recreate the bottle.

5. Make sure the imported context curve has the construction property OFF. Select the Context
curve in the Active scene. Uncheck the Construction box in the properties page. Construction
lines are now only visible in the sketch but will be ignored for creating a 3D afterwards.

6. Select the Offset operation in the Sketch tab. Select the Context Curve in the Entities box.
Give the bottle an offset of 2mm. Select as Direction internal offset. Uncheck the Remove
original checkbox. Make the Convex corners Type Round.

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A revolve operation will rotate the sketch over an angle of 360°. Therefore, half of the sketch
needs to be trimmed away.

7. C Before creating the trim line, click on the Construction Property operation. All the sketch
operations done from this point on will receive the construction property, and thus will not be
used for 3D operations (such as the Revolve operation).

8. Select the Line operation in the Sketch tab. Create a line as shown in the figure below.

9. Select the Trim operation in the Sketch tab and trim the two curves in the sketch as shown
below.

The next steps (10 - 13) will show how to make a small design changes on the bottle.

10. C First, disable the Construction Property (Sketch tab) operation.

11. Select the Circle operation in the Sketch tab and create a circle which snaps to the outer
surface of the bottle.

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12. To create constraints for the circle, start with selecting the circle in the database tree. All
the possible constraints will be highlighted now. Select the Set Radius (Sketch Tab) constraint.
Fill in a Radius of 3 mm and Apply the operation.

13. Select the Trim operation again in the Sketch tab. Trim the lines in the sketch as shown in
the figure below.

To make it an open bottle, the top lines of the bottle need to be cut off. Therefore, an extra line will be
created as shown in the next steps (14 - 16).

14. Select the Line operation in the Sketch tab and create a horizontal line.

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15. Select the Trim operation in the Sketch tab and trim the lines to obtain a result as shown in
the next image.

Task 2: Converting the 2D sketch design to a 3D part

1. Go back to the Work Area. Highlight the original bottle, right-click and select Hide.

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2. Go to the Design tab and select the Revolve operation. Apply the settings as shown
below. Make sure the Rotation axis Direction is the X-axis of the sketch. Highlight the
Direction parameter and click on the X-axis of the Sketch.

Task 3: Labeling

This part of the exercise will create a label on the surface of the bottle. This label can be created by
yourself in 3-matic or you can import a label (*.dxf). Here we will create our own text label.

1. Go to the Finish tab and select the Quick Label operation. As Method, select Text. In the
Text field, type in “3-matic”.
You can assign a different color to the label by selecting New color option in the Label color
parameter.
Set the other settings as shown below. Go to the work area and hover to the desired position
on the bottle. Press the left mouse button to apply the label.

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2. Alternatively, we can use a drawing to create the label. Go back to the Quick Label
operation and set the Method to Drawing. Highlight the Import DXF file parameter and browse
to the DemoFiles folder. Select Logo_Materialise.dxf. Set the settings as shown below. Go to
the work area and hover to the desired position on the bottle. Press to apply the label.

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Exercise 9: Cooling channel design on a mold

Task 1: Creating a hollow part

1. Go to File > Open Project > DemoFiles > Lion_Cavity.mxp

2. Go to the Design tab and open the Hollow operation to create a new surface at a certain
distance from the input part. This surface can then be used as the base surface, to freely
draw curves on, later being the centerlines for the cooling channels. Apply the settings as
shown here:

3. As a result, a new surface is created at 7 mm distance inside the part. Move this new surface
to a new part, by selecting it in the object tree, right-click and select Separate > Move to Part
> Create new. Hide the original part (Lion Cavity) and rename the newly created part to
‘Hollow result’.

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4. As a result, you will now see the hollow part in the 3D view. Any curve drawn on this part, will
be at 7 mm distance from the original cavity. These curves can then be the centerlines of the
cooling channels. Creating a cooling channel with a radius of 2mm will then result in having
a perfect distance of 5mm between the cooling channel and the parting surface.

Note: You can verify the result as well by showing the Lion Cavity again and showing as well the
‘Standard Section – X’ in the database tree.

Task 2: Creation of centerline curves

1. Create a new sketch by selecting the ZX-plane in the object tree, right-click > New >
Sketch.

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2. Go to the Sketch tab and select the Import operation. Import the projection of the surface
contour of the lion surface (of the original cavity, this can be located in the object tree as well.
Lion Cavity > Surface List > Lion > Border > Contour) and import the outline of the hollow
result into the sketch. Go to the sketch scene by clicking on the Sketch tab.

3. Go to the Sketch tab, click on the Line split button and click Line Sequence. The
imported context curves will help you in positioning the lines. Make sure the lines are wider
than the lion. At this stage, you may hide the all entities and leave only Sketch-001 to have a
better view.

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4. Go back to the Work Area. To project the line sequence that has been created onto the
Hollow part, go to the Curve tab and select the Project Curve operation. Change the settings
as shown below. Make sure the negative Y-direction is indicated as Projection Direction
parameter. Apply the operation and Hide the sketch.

As a result, the sketch curves have been projected on the hollow part and a curve entity is
added in the tree of the Hollow result. It is now still necessary to enlarge the curves at the
end points, so that the curve comes out of the original Lion Cavity. That will ensure that a
Boolean subtraction operation can be done afterwards.

5. First, hide the surface of the hollow result. Surface List > right-click > Hide in the context menu.

6. Go to the Curve tab and select the Enlarge operation. The length of the free curve that
will be added should be 30mm to be certain it is larger than the original Lion Cavity. Apply the
operation.

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7. From the (hidden) Lion Cavity part, select the lion surface in the object tree and Copy it to a
New Part, via the context menu. The new part will have the name Lion Cavity-001, indicating
that it originates from the Lion Cavity part. It is now visible that the curves are nicely following
the shape of the cavity, at a fixed distance of 7mm.

Task 3: Distance to curve check

The Analyze tab makes it possible to verify the correctness of the created centerlines. A distance-to-
curve analysis can reveal the actual distance between a curve and a part.

1. Go to the Fix tab and select the Invert Normal operation. Make sure the Lion Cavity-001
part is selected to execute this operation. This will invert the orientation of the triangles of the
part Lion Cavity-001 to visualize the analysis on the front faces of the triangles.

2. Open the Distance to Curve operation from the Analyze tab. Apply the settings as shown
below.

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3. As result, the distance between Lion Cavity-001 and the curve is calculated and represented
via a histogram (properties of the created analysis) and accordingly visualized via coloring
the part. In the histogram some statistical information is available as well, informing that the
minimum distance between curve and part is indeed 7 mm (due to the ‘discrete’ nature of a
mesh based object, this value will never be a perfect 7 mm).

Task 4: Creating a cooling channel

1. Open the Circular Sweep operation from the Design tab. Select the created centerline
curve as Sweep paths. Make sure the Sweep diameter parameter is set to 4 mm. As result a
new part is created containing the Cooling channel.

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2. Show the original Lion Cavity part again and Hide the Lion Cavity-001 part. Make sure the
Bottom surface of the original Lion Cavity part is hidden to see the cooling channels.

3. Go to the Design tab and select Boolean Subtraction. Indicate the Lion Cavity and
Cooling Channel-001 part respectively as Entity and Subtraction Entity. The other parameters
can be set as indicated in the screenshot below. Then, apply the operation. As a result, the
Lion Cavity now has conformal cooling channels added to its geometry.

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Exercise 10: Design a tibial osteotomy guide.

This exercise demonstrates how a tibial osteotomy guide can be designed with the use of guide design
tools (Create Base, Guiding Tube, Cut Slot, Flange, and Guide Bridge) in Materialise 3-matic. Note that
the positions of the osteotomy planes are not indicative of realistic margins around a tumor and are only
intended to be used for the purpose of the tutorial.
Task 1: Create Guide Bases
The first step in designing this surgical guide is to determine the area(s) of interest on the bone where
the cutting and/or drilling events should take place. The determined area(s) will be converted to a base
of a guide that hosts functional guide elements such as fixation pins, drilling holes, cutting slots etc.

1. Open Project [Link].

2. Wrap the Tibia (Design tab) to start from a smooth part.

3. Show only Tibia_wrapped, Distal Osteotomy, and Proximal Osteotomy.

4. Create a curve (Curve tab) in the area where the Proximal Osteotomy plane is located. The
selected area should extend slightly distal and mostly proximal from the Proximal Osteotomy
plane on the Tibia_wrapped part.

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5. Use the Create Base tool in the Guide section of the Design tab to create a guide base by
selecting the surface split by the curve created in the previous step. Rename the created base
to Proximal_base.

6. Create a Polyline Patch (Surface tab) where the Distal Osteotomy plane is located. The
selected area should extend slightly proximal and mostly distal from the Distal Osteotomy plane
on the Tibia_wrapped part.

7. Use Create Base and select the surface that was created by the Polyline Patch in the
previous step. Rename the created base to Distal_base.

Note: To create the outline of the guide bases, Curves, Patches, as well as Mark tools can be used to
indicate the area of interest. Furthermore, there are many alternatives to add thickness to the surface
to create a base, such as Hollow, Uniform Offset, Wrap, Move Surface, Variable Offset, and Local Offset.

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Task 2: Create a Cut Slot

Once the guide base has been designed, the functional elements of the guide can be created one at a
time. The Proximal Osteotomy and Distal Osteotomy planes serve as the indicators for where the
bone cutting should take place.

1. Search and launch Create Cut Slot from the Quick Search bar, then create a cut slot using
Proximal Osteotomy as the Entity.

2. Adjust the position of the preview of the cut slot by checking the checkbox for Translate/Rotate
and rotating and translating in the Work Area, so that it protrudes above, yet maintains an
overlap with the guide base. You may need to adjust the parameters of the Cut profile and the
Cut slot to get the dimensions to match the guide base you designed. Once the adjustment is
done, click Apply to have the result generated.

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Task 3: Create a flange

Like a cut slot, a flange can be designed to guide the location where bone cutting should occur. With
the Create Flange tool which can also be accessed via the Guide section in the Design tab, single or
double flanges can be created based on your guide design requirements with one click on Apply.

1. Create Flange on Distal_base with Distal Osteotomy plane as the Entity.

2. The excess part of the flange should be removed. Prior to the removal, Show Only the
Tibia_wrapped, Distal_base, and the flange and set the transparency of Tibia_wrapped part to
High. Rotate the camera view so that the viewing direction is perpendicular to the flange.

3. Trim (Finish tab) away the excess part.

Task 4: Create Multiple Guiding Tubes

Tube-like elements can be important in a surgical guide to provide guidance to the surgeon on the
specific location to drill for screw placement or to fix the guide in place. In this task, creating these
elements through the use of Create Guiding Tube will be demonstrated.

1. Show only the Tibia_wrapped, Proximal_base, and the created cut slot from the previous
task.

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2. Launch Create Guiding Tube from the Guide section in the Design tab to create a pin and
its pin holder by selecting a triangle normal’s direction on Proximal_base. To avoid any gap
between the pin and the base and thereby enable a clean Boolean Union later, select the guide
base’s surface as the input for the Extend into parameter so that the in-between gap is closed.

3. To increase the stability of the guide on the tibia, more fixation pins can be created easily at
different locations by the tool. Translate/Rotate in this tool can be checked and the 3D widget is
activated in the Work Area in case any repositioning/reorientation is needed.

4. Show Distal_base and the previously created flange. Repeat the same step for creating pins
and their holders on the base.

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5. Note that all the created pins and their holders are in the InnerCylinders and OuterCylinders
groups respectively in the Object Tree due to the checked Add to groups parameter in the
operation page. This can help to ease the later step of making an open pinhole in the pin holders
and guide base through Boolean Subtract. If group creation is not necessary, the parameter can
be unchecked.

Task 5: Create a Bridge

A bridge is an element that comes in handy if there is more than one guide base required for a surgical
guide. A bridge connects separate pieces and strengthens them as a single part.

1. Use Create Guide Bridge that is next to the Create Flange tool in the Design tab. Select
one point on Proximal_base and another point on Distal_base. To close any possible gap
between the bridge and the bases, the corresponding surfaces where the selected points are
located will be the input for the Extend into parameters.

Task 6: Finalize Guide Design

1. Before all the elements and bases can be united into a single part, Distal_base needs to
be modified so that the cutting plane is not blocked by the excess material of the base. Use Cut
from the Design tab.

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2. Two new parts will be created. Only the bigger piece should be kept and renamed as
Distal_base_cut.

3. Boolean Union (Design tab) Proximal_base, Distal_base_cut, OuterCylinders group, cut

slot, flange, and bridge as a single part.

4. Use Auto Fix or Fix Wizard (Fix tab) until the number of intersecting triangles is zero. Note
that there may still be some overlapping triangles after fixing but it is fine to have them as part
of the final guide because overlapping triangles will typically not cause any major issues in
further operations or in 3D printing.

5. Perform Boolean Subtraction (Design tab) to create holes for fixation pins and cutting slot
by selecting InnerCylinders group and cut profile as the Subtraction entities, subtracting them
from the result in the previous step. Rename the result as Guide.

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6. Perform Boolean Subtraction (Design tab) with Tibia_wrapped and set a small clearance
between the bone and the guide.

7. Fix the result using Auto Fix, Fix Wizard (Fix tab), or manual methods.

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/ Chapter 5: Remesh
Remeshing is intended to optimize your models for FEA (Finite Element Analysis) or CFD
(Computational Fluid Dynamics) purposes. In Mimics and 3-matic, all 3D models are made from
triangulated surfaces. This allows capturing very complex geometrical structures accurately. The
remesh operations enable you to transform badly shaped triangles quickly and easily into more
equilateral triangles. The more geometrically ‘regular’ the triangles are, the more accurate the results of
the FEA/CFD calculations will be.

Basic explanation of the finite element method

The intent of a finite element method is to represent an object with a limited number of elements that
are connected to each other by nodes. This allows approximating the behavior of a complex structure
with a series of partial differential equations, which are numerically solved. For example, it can be used
to calculate mechanical stresses in implants during gait.

The smaller the elements become, the more the method converges to the analytical solution, which is
often too complex to be solved by itself. However, more elements are needed when the element size is
reduced, which makes the calculation more complex and time intensive. Choosing the correct element
size is thus very important to reduce the complexity of the analyses, but still provide sufficient accuracy
for the application. Typically, a small element size is used for small features and a bigger element size
for regions that are less of interest.

Element quality
The element types that are used in 3-matic are triangle surface elements and tetrahedral volume
elements. The quality of the mesh is assessed by how well the elements resemble equilateral triangles
and tetrahedrons. This quality influences the capability of the solver program to converge to a solution
and affects the accuracy of the numerical simulation. For example: badly shaped elements are more
likely to collapse when one of the nodes is moved, which will give an error in most solver programs and
stop the calculation. Sharp angles, flat angles or a distorted shape are typical indications for a bad
quality element.

The quality of the elements can be inspected in Materialise 3-matic with shape measures related to
triangle properties such as base, length, angle, height, etc. These shape measures indicate how much
the elements resemble an equilateral triangle or tetrahedral element. More information about the shape
measures and their specific values can be found in the Remesh chapter of the user guide.

Good quality element Bad quality element

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Typical Remesh workflow

1. DICOM (Mimics)
Mimics allows you to segment the anatomy of interest from DICOM images.

2. 3D anatomy (Mimics)
From the segmented DICOM images a 3D part can be generated, which can be exported to 3-
matic for further pre-processing.

3. Smooth anatomy (3-matic)

Often parts contain little details/artefacts that are not needed for the final FEA/CFD
simulation. Representing these details requires a small triangulation, which increases the total
number of nodes. By performing the Smooth or Wrap operations, the geometry & topology of
the part can be simplified. This reduces the total number of triangles needed to represent the
part.

4. Optimized mesh (3-matic)

3-matic contains several tools to optimize the surface element quality:
• Adaptive Remesh: Optimize and locally refine the mesh while preserving detailed features.
• Uniform Remesh: Provides a uniform and high-quality surface mesh.
• Gradient Remesh: Improve the growth rate between the elements.
• Quality Preserving Reduce Triangles: Reduce triangles while preserving element quality.

Once you are satisfied with the surface mesh, the Create Volume Mesh tool will generate
tetrahedral elements starting from the surface elements.

5. Materials (Mimics)
The volume mesh can be combined with the DICOM images in Mimics. This allows you to
assign realistic material properties to the mesh derived from the CT gray values.

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Tips and tricks

• Always undo the previous remesh, when testing out optimal meshing parameters.

• Before creating a volume mesh, it is a good idea to check for intersecting triangles and bad
contours with the Fix Wizard of the Fix tab. Intersecting triangles and bad contours will not allow
creating a volume mesh.

• Performing a smooth after a remesh operation can further improve the mesh quality.

• When setting a maximum edge length upon creation of a volume mesh it is advised to use
a minimal edge length that is slightly bigger than the surface edge length.

• In the properties of the Volume List, you can change the visualization of the volume elements
to make the edges more visible.

• The Manual Surface Mesh Tools allow you to refine single elements. For most of these tools,
holding Ctrl allows for more user control of the element refinement.

Exercise 1: Introduction to the workflow

This exercise will guide you through a typical FEA workflow, starting from the 3D part in Mimics to a
quality volume mesh with material properties based on the medical images.

Task 1: Import and visualize the mesh

1. Open Mimics. Go to File > Open project and browse to the DemoFiles folder and open
[Link]. Copy the 3D object “Yellow2” to your clipboard.

2. Open 3-matic and press CTRL + V to paste the part into 3-matic.

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3. In the Object Tree change the name to “Femur”. Select the femur and go to the Properties
page. This provides information about the number of triangles and nodes (Points).
Optional: change the color of the Front face to a more bone-like color (Red: 255, Green:
240, Blue:206).

4. Change the view from Smooth Shaded to Filled with Triangle Edges [Shift + F3].

Task 2: Reduce the details of the anatomical part

1. Reduce the amount of detail in the femur. Click on the Smooth button in the Fix tab and
apply the default parameters. Alternatively, the Wrap option in the Fix tab can be used.

Note: A smooth surface makes it easier to represent the geometry with a larger element size, which
reduces the computational cost for the solver program.

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Task 3: Remesh the surface elements

1. Optimize the surface elements with the Uniform Remesh tool. Adjust the parameters
as shown below and apply the operation.

When changing the Target triangle edge length, the logger will provide an estimation of the number of
triangles that will be generated.

Task 4: Generate the volume mesh

1. In the Remesh tab, select the Create Volume Mesh button. To have a uniform mesh
inside the model, define the Maximum edge length typically slightly bigger than the
maximum edge length of the surface mesh. For now, use 3 mm and Tet4 elements.

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Setting a maximum edge length may increase the number of elements, which will cause an increase of
calculation time in the solver program.

2. To visualize the effect of the volume generation, go to the Work Area and clip the 3D objects
using the Standard Section – Y as a clipping plane and adjusting its position.

Task 5: Material assignment

CT scans of bones can be used to assign material properties to the FEA model, since there is usually a
direct relation between the intensity of the images (Hounsfield unit or gray values) and the density of the
bone as depicted in the schematic below. By combining the information of the DICOM images and the
volume mesh an accurate material assignment can be performed in Mimics.

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1. In 3-matic, select and copy (Ctrl+C) the “Femur”. Go back to Mimics, where the original project
was open, and press Ctrl+V to paste the volume meshes. The volume mesh will appear in the
FEA Mesh Project Management tab, on the right-hand side of the Mimics interface.

2. With the Materials tool, under the FEA Project Management tab, the material properties
(density, Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio) can be assigned. Make sure the Femur is
selected, right click and then click on the Materials tool. The Material Assignment dialogue box
will then pop up.

A gray-value based method will be used for the material assignment. More precisely, two
material types will be defined:

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- Material type 1: One material value with a density of 50 kg/m^3 will be used for all negative HU
values until 100 HU. The purpose of this material type is to set a lower limit for the density, and
it helps to prevent negative density values.

- Material type 2: Ten materials will be used to cover the trabecular bone and cortical bone range.
Take 50 kg/m^3 and 1900 kg/m^3 as the minimum and maximum density values of the bone.

For both material types, use the following Young’s modulus (E) and Poisson ratio (v):
E = 0.004*ρ^2.01 (MPa) and v=0.3.

The Mimics reference guide contains Empirical Expressions for several bone types with references to
the corresponding papers.
(Mimics Menus > FEA > Assign Material> Material Expressions > Empirical expressions)

3. Start by creating an additional tab by pressing on the [+] button next to Material type 1.

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4. For material type 1 use the following settings:

5. For material type 2 use the settings below. Afterwards press “Apply” and “Close” the window.

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6. To inspect the inside of the model, use the clipping functionality. Make sure the Texturing
is on None.

7. Finally, you can export the mesh with material properties to a solver program. File > Export.

Exercise 2: Inspect mesh quality

In this exercise you will learn how to inspect the quality of the surface and volume elements. Also, it will
be shown how the Smooth operation can further improve the results of the Adaptive remesh tool.

1. File > Open Project > DemoFiles > [Link]

2. The Fix Wizard of the Fix tab allows inspecting and solving overlapping and intersecting
triangles, which are often present in thin complex structures. By pressing Follow advice, the
Fix Wizard can solve most problems automatically.

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Note: Do not use the Follow advice option when dealing with a Non-manifold Assembly.

Task 1: Inspect the quality of the surface mesh

1. To inspect the properties of the mesh, select the object of interest in Object Tree and
click on the Inspect Part button in the Remesh tab, an Inspection View will be shown. With
this view, different quality parameters of the surface mesh can be investigated and
elements with bad quality can easily be located. Note that the values shown in the
screenshots can be different between users.

Shape measure: Way of comparing the shape of the elements with an equilateral triangle
Inspection measure: Inspect a property of the elements e.g., height, edge length, angles, etc.
Growth measure: Inspect the transition from smaller to larger triangles

2. In the Quality parameters section, adjust the Shape measure to Skewness (N) and in
Histogram parameters make sure that Current measure is set to Shape measure. Adjust
the Maximum number to 0.3, by typing or dragging the green outer edge of the histogram.
The histogram shows that a certain percentage of the triangles have a shape quality lower
than 0.3, in this case 16%. This value can also differ from user to user.

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3. To visualize the triangles with a quality lower than the specified threshold, select the Color
low quality triangles checkbox. The colors of the triangles correspond to the colors of the
bars in the histogram.

Task 2: Remesh the surface elements

1. To optimize the surface mesh, the Adaptive Remesh tool in the Remesh tab is used.
Adjust the parameters as shown below and apply the operation. Check the influence of the
Adaptive Remesh operation on the Inspection page.

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Task 3: Further improve the mesh by Smoothing

1. Go to the Fix tab and select the Smooth tool. Make sure to use the smooth on the
separate Surface sets to preserve the edges of the in- and outlets. Go back to the Object
Tree to select the different surfaces or select them in the work area

2. Inspect the effect of the smoothing on the histogram of the Inspection Page.

3. Apply the Adaptive (Remesh tab) operation again with same parameters as before to
further optimize the mesh and fix issues (by Fix Wizard) that might have occurred in thin
regions.

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Task 4: Generate a Tet10 volume mesh

For this example, a Tet10 tetrahedron will be created, which has an extra node in the middle of each
connection. Tet10 elements are commonly known as quadratic tetrahedron elements and make it
possible to simulate non-linear element behavior, as shown below.

Tet4 element Tet10 element Non-linear behavior

Non-linear element behavior can provide more realistic results but is more difficult and computationally
intensive to calculate.

1. Use the Create Volume Mesh tool and select Tet10 as the element type. In the Analyze
mesh quality section, select Aspect ratio (A) as Shape measure and set the Shape quality
threshold to 100. Upon completion, a metadata that contains the analysis result will be created.

With the expert mode you can project the mid nodes on the original (not remeshed) surface.

Original shape (not remeshed) Tet10 of remeshed shape Tet10 with projected midpoints

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Task 5: Inspect the quality of the volume mesh

1. Open the Analyze Mesh Quality tool in the Remesh tab. This tool allows you to inspect
the quality of the surface and volume mesh.

2. Check the Display the shape measure list checkbox and switch between the solvers to see
the effect of the solver setting. Afterwards you can uncheck the list.

3. For now, use Custom as a solver. Press Apply and check the newly created metadata in
the Object Tree. From the analysis, you can see the mesh passed all the criteria.

4. If you want a more detailed overview of a certain shape measure, you can plot a histogram.
Check Calculate histogram, put it on Volume and change the Shape measure to Aspect
ratio (A). To find the location of a bad element, check the Mark bad elements box. Put the
parameter values as shown below and press Apply. A new metadata will be created in the
Object Tree, and it will display the mesh statistics. If there are triangles that do not reach
the shape quality, they will be marked in the Work Area.

Exercise 3: Local mesh refinement

To reduce the computational cost of running a FE simulation without compromising the quality of the
results, it is often desired to have a large density of elements in a certain area while having a lower
density of elements in other areas.

Task 1: Surface refinement

1. Go to File > Open Project > DemoFiles > [Link]

2. Use the Mark Freeform Area tool (Mark Tab) to select part of the femur head. Make sure
to hold the SHIFT button when making the selection. Create a new surface, as shown below.
Afterwards, do the same for the lower extremity of the femur. Make sure to rename the surfaces,
with an appropriate name.

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3. Open the Adaptive Remesh tool (Remesh tab) and use the Adaptive Remesh parameters
as shown below. For the Local remesh parameters do the following: use the head as the entity
and set the Maximum edge length to 1 mm and use an Influence area of 0 mm, then press Add.
Next remove the head as an entity, by pressing delete, and now select the bottom as the entity.
Now use a Maximum edge length of 2 mm and an Influence area of 0 mm, press Add again.
Change the Growth rate to 10 and press Apply.

Note: The influence area allows you to expand the area, where the defined local Maximum edge
length will be used, with a distance in mm. This is particularly useful when using contours as
entities for local remeshing.

4. Perform a smooth operation to further optimize the mesh. Go to Fix > Smooth .

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You can use a variety of input entities for the local remesh parameters: curves, surfaces, parts, etc.
These entities do not need to belong to your part e.g. using an additional sphere part:

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Task 2: Volume refinement

1. Next, we will create the volume mesh, using the same parameters as for the surface mesh.
Go to Remesh > Create Volume Mesh, the same Local volume mesh parameters as for the
surface mesh will be used.

When using a surface as a local entity, the elements will grow towards the inside with the defined growth
rate. When using a Part as a local entity all the elements inside that part will have the defined local edge
length.
Using a surface Using a part

2. Clip the part to visualize the inside. You can see the volumes are gradually growing from the
surface to the middle.

3. In the properties of the Volume List, you can change the visualization of the volume elements
to make the element edges more visible.

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Exercise 4: Gradient Remesh

The Gradient Remesh tool allows you to create a smooth transition between small and large triangles.
The smooth transition is either based on the area of the triangle (called Area-growth) or on the largest
edge length of the triangle (called Edge-growth). The range of the transition area is based on a ring
definition, which decides which neighboring elements must be considered to determine the smooth
transition, as illustrated:

1. File > Open Project > DemoFiles > [Link]

2. Use the Adaptive Remesh tool (Remesh tab) to provide the wall with an edge length of
4mm and the In-outlets an edge length of 1 mm. Notice the bad growth rate between the wall
and the in-outlets.

3. Click on Aorta in the Object Tree and use the Inspect Part tool. In the Quality parameters
set the Growth measure on Edge-growth 3-rings and change the Current measure to Growth
measure in the Histogram parameters. Put the maximum of the histogram on 0.5, we will use
this as a reference.

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Open the Remesh > Gradient tool and use the following parameters to improve the growth:

Exercise 5: Creating a Midplane mesh

A mid-plane mesh is typically used to represent a solid model by a single surface. To approximate the
volume, a thickness property must be assigned in the solver program. Midplanes are particularly useful
for representing thin geometries, these would otherwise require a fine mesh to accurately represent
bending behavior.

1. Open Project Aorta_Hollow.mxp from the demo files.

2. Using right click in the object tree, copy the Outer Wall surface and Inner Wall surface to a
new part. Rename the respective parts as Outer Wall and Inner Wall.

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3. For creating a midplane, go to Remesh tab and select the option Create Midplane. Select
Entity 1 as Outer Wall and Entity 2 as Inner Wall. Click on Apply to perform the operation.
Hide the Outer Wall and Inner Wall to show the created midplane.

4. After the midplane is created, go to Remesh tab and select Adaptive. Select Entities as
midplane, Target triangle edge length parameter as 1.0 mm and check ON Preserve surface
contours. Click on Apply to perform the operation.

5. To analyze the width of the midplane go to Analyze tab and click Midplane Thickness.
Select Entity as midplane and Limiting Entities as Outer Wall and Inner Wall. Click on Apply to
perform the operation. The histogram result shows that the width of the midplane is
approximately 1.0 mm. For this part we know the width of the wall was 1 mm, but if you have a
more difficult part with an uneven thickness a similar analysis needs to be performed.

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6. Export the surface mesh of this model and assign a thickness of 1 mm in the solver program.

Non-manifold Assembly
Performing loading simulations on a bone-implant interface is interesting for several reasons, e.g. in
order to check whether the loads are properly transferred from the plate to the bone.

Since non-conforming surfaces generally tend to create high stress concentrations, thus resulting in an
unrealistic loading situation, it is quite important for a Finite Element program that the meshes of both
the plate and the bone have shared nodes at the interface.

Mimics and 3-matic can solve this problem by creating a non-manifold assembly. This tool allows
assembling two or more parts into one combined part, which has a shared surface at the intersecting
regions. The parts can then be remeshed, thereby ensuring a good interface between the parts. The
parts can be split after the remesh, which will create parts that have matching nodes at the interface
surfaces.

There are three possibilities that allow generating a non-manifold assembly.

1. Materialise Mimics:
Mimics can convert masks to a 3D non-manifold part. Use this method when there is a mask
of each part available.

2. Materialise 3-matic (Intersection-based):

3-matic can generate a non-manifold part based on a Boolean operation. Use this method
when not all the parts have a mask available and when the parts are intersecting with each
other.

3. Materialise 3-matic (Grid-based):

3-matic can generate a non-manifold like Mimics by converting the parts to a specified grid.
Use this method when not all the parts have images available, and parts do not have proper
intersections.

Note: Do not use Fix > Fix Wizard for automatic fixing of the non-manifold part. The Wizard will try to fix
features that are typical for a non-manifold assembly. The tool can still be used for diagnostics.

Exercise 6: Creating Non-manifold Assembly for anatomical parts

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In this exercise you will learn how to make an assembly with Mimics. All parts of interest have a
segmented mask and there is no need to add a CAD part, so an assembly with Mimics will be the best
approach.

Task 1: Generate Non-manifold Assembly in Mimics

1. Open the [Link] project from the DemoFiles folder in the installation folder of 3-matic in
Mimics.

2. Go to the Masks tab under the project management tab, mark the assemblies in the list by
clicking on in the Assembly column. Following this order L4 > L3 > Disc_L3_L4. The order is
important, the first selected mask will be subtracted from the ones which are selected later.

3. Go to FEA tab and click on Create Non-manifold.

4. Use the parameters as shown in the figure below and click on Calculate.

Note: The quality of the resulting mesh is better when using a cube-like matrix, however, this
affects the accuracy of the resulting mesh.

5. Copy the generated assembly of the vertebral column to your clipboard by selecting the
assembly and pressing Ctrl+C. Open 3-matic and paste the part.

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Task 2: Reduce details and Remesh the surface elements

1. After the assembly is present in 3-matic, press [Shift + F3] to visualize the triangulation on the
assembly.

2. Reduce the amount of detail in the vertebral column. Go to Fix tab and select Smooth or
use the shortcut [Alt+S], select Assembly as Entity, use 0.7 as Smooth factor, check OFF the
Perform post processing option and click on Apply.

3. Upon a quick inspection of the properties and mesh quality, the quality seems sufficient, and
we only must reduce the number of triangles. With Inspect Part you can determine the average edge
length and current quality of the triangles. The top right image below shows the quality using the
skewness measure. The skewness is above 0.5.
Inspect Part also allows users to assess the average edge length of the mesh by selecting
Inspection measure as Current measure and dragging the histogram slider to left or right: the edge
length for 51% of the triangles is below approximately 1.17mm whereas the maximum edge length
for the whole mesh is approximately 1.90mm. Note that the values shown in the screenshots can
be different between users.

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4. To reduce the triangles of the Assembly while preserving their quality go to Remesh tab
and select Reduce Mesh. Use the parameters as shown in the image below and click Apply.

5. Optional: Use Smooth (Fix tab) and Adaptive Remesh (Remesh tab) operations in
sequence to further optimize the quality of the mesh of the vertebral column. Use the Smooth
and Adaptive Remesh parameters as shown in the images below and click Apply.

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Note: When using the Uniform Remesh tool (Remesh tab), the smooth curve operation can help to
improve the interface contours. Go to Curve > Smooth , select the bad contours and press Apply.

Task 3: Create volume mesh

To introduce a slight element growth internally in your model you can use the Local volume mesh
parameters and define only an edge length of 2 mm around the surface.

1. Go to Remesh > Create Volume Mesh, select Assembly as Entity. Select all surfaces of the
assembly as Entities for Local volume mesh parameters. Set the parameters as shown below,
click on Add and then press Apply.

2. Use the Standard section – Y to Clip the volume mesh.

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Task 4: Material assignment

1. In 3-matic, select and copy (Ctrl+C) the volume meshes of the “Vertebra”. Go back to Mimics,
where the original project was open, and press Ctrl+V to paste the volume meshes.

2. Rename the sub-volumes to avoid confusion, hide the sub volumes one by one to figure the
order out.

3. Assign the material properties on the subvolumes, with the Assign Material tool.
For the Vertebrae use gray value-based method and the following expressions:

ρ = 47 + 1.122* HU [kg/m3]
E = 0.02 *ρ^1.75 [MPa]
V = 0.3

For the Intermediate Disc use a homogenous material assignment. You do not have to wait for
the histogram to be calculated, since it is only one value.

ρ = 1000 [kg/m3]
E = 4.2 [MPa]
V = 0.45

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4. Use clipping to internally inspect the part.

5. Finally, you can export the mesh with material properties to a solver program. Go to File > Export.

Exercise 7: Creating Non-manifold Assembly for intersecting parts

In this exercise you will learn how to make an assembly with 3-matic. This is an example for when there
are for some parts no images available, and they are intersecting or can be easily modified to be
intersecting. For these cases, the intersection-based method provides the most accurate results.

1. File > Open Project > DemoFiles > [Link]

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2. The interface between the bone and the plate can be better visualized by changing the
transparency level of the bone; to do this, right-click on the Bone in the Object tree and choose
Transparency > High. Set the transparency for the Plate to medium.

3. You will notice that the plate does not intersect with the bone. To make this intersection use
Move Surface tool in the Design tab. Select the bottom surface of the plate and apply the
following settings. If you do not have the Design tab available, you can continue with the hidden
part: Plate_MovedSurface.

4. A recommended step when creating a non-manifold with this method is to first remesh all
the surfaces with similar parameters. Go to Remesh > Adaptive and use the following
parameters:

5. Select the Create Non-Manifold Assembly from the Remesh tab. The main entity is the
object whose volume will be reduced with the inserting entities. The volume of the intersecting
entity will be preserved. The order is important, the bottom ones will always be subtracted from
the top entities.

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6. Hide the original parts in the object tree.

7. The Create Non-Manifold Assembly tool generates different surface sets respectively
corresponding to the main entity (Plate), the intersecting entity (Bone and screws) and the
interface between them. Show/hide each of the surface set separately to see how the Boolean
operation of the non-manifold was performed.

8. Now improve the mesh between the parts with Adaptive Remesh (Remesh Tab). Use the
parameters as mentioned in the image below. Make sure the expert mode is ON.

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9. The next step is to split the non-manifold back into separate parts. Use Remesh > Split
Non-Manifold Assembly tool and select the assembly as Entity and press Apply.

10. The final step is creating a volume mesh of each part. Go to Remesh > Create Volume
Mesh. Enable the control edge length parameter to use a similar maximum edge length as used
for the surface mesh, 0.5 mm.

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Exercise 8: Creating a Non-manifold Assembly with a grid

In this exercise you will learn how to make an assembly with 3-matic. This is an example of an input file
where there are no images available, and the parts are difficult to modify to become intersecting. For
these cases the grid-based method provides the best results.

Task 1: Creating the non-manifold assembly

1. Open project [Link] from DemoFiles

2. To create the non-manifold assembly, go to Remesh > Create Non-manifold. For this porous
structure with no proper intersection, it is advised to use the grid-based method. Set the
parameters as shown in the image below.

Note: The smaller the grid size the more accurately the non-manifold will represent the original parts,
but this will increase the computational efforts (see logger information).

Task 2: Reducing the number of triangles

The grid-based method will already provide good quality triangles but depending on the grid resolution
a high number of triangles can be generated. With 3-matic you can keep a high number of triangles at
the interface contours and reduce the triangles in the other areas.

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1. In the object tree, convert the bad contours to curves and group the curves together in a curve
set.

2. Go to Remesh > Adaptive. Make sure the Expert mode is ON. To reduce the number of
triangles, use the parameters as shown in the image below.

3. Delete the curve set from the part, this is no longer necessary.

4. Use the Smooth operation on the different surface sets to improve the quality. Go to Fix ->
Smooth and use the parameters as shown in the image below.

5. Go to Remesh > Split Non-manifold and use the parameters as shown in the image below.

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Exercise 9: Improving the accuracy of the grid-based method

Conversion to a grid will always cause some geometrical errors. For CAD parts these errors can be
higher than desired. 3-matic can regain accuracy, by projecting the surfaces back on the original mesh.
In this exercise it is shown how you can perform this projection and how to identify and fix intersecting
triangles caused by the projection.

Task 1: Creating the non-manifold assembly

1. Open Project Trabecular_Screw.mxp from DemoFiles.

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2. To create the non-manifold assembly, go to Remesh > Create Non-manifold and use the
parameters as shown in the image below.

Task 2: Improving the accuracy of the screw

3. Hide the Trabecular surface set and visually compare the original screw with the screw in the
assembly.

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4. To improve the accuracy of the screw, go to Fix > Project Mesh. For Entities use the screw
surfaces sets of the assembly. For Target entity use the original screw and make sure the
method is On selection.

Task 3: Dealing with intersecting triangles

The projecting step might introduce intersecting triangles. Note that when using a small grid size there
is less chance of intersecting triangles.

1. Use the fix wizard to identify the number of intersecting triangles.

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2. You can single out islands of the intersecting areas to easily identify and fix the intersecting
areas. Make the trabecular surface visible and use the following tools in this order to create
those islands:

a. Fix > Intersecting Triangles or press [Ctrl + Shift + Q] (make sure the non-manifold
assembly part is selected)
b. Mark > Expand > Expand by Number

c. Mark > Invert or press [O]

d. Mark > Make Invisible or press [H]
e. Fix > Intersecting Triangles or press [Ctrl + Shift + Q]

3. Use the manual surface mesh tools to fix the area.

a. Use Delete Triangle to delete the intersecting triangles. Often some neighboring
triangles must be removed as well.
b. Use Create Triangle to fill up the hole. Make sure the nodes are properly connected.

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4. Mark > Make All Visible

Task 4: Improving the mesh

Triangles of the trabecular structure, which are located at the interface, are elongated with the projection
of the screw. Because the rest of the mesh still has a good quality only this area will be remeshed.

1. Create a curve from all the Bad Contours by [Right Mouse Click] > Separate > Copy to New
Curve. Group all the Curves in a new Curve Set by [Right Mouse Click] > Separate > Move to
New Curve Set

2. Mark > Entities, select the curve set. Press the up arrow or Mark > Expand.

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3. Use the Adaptive Remesh (Remesh tab) on the marked areas. Use a Target triangle edge
length with a value slightly smaller than the grid size that was used during the assembly.

4. In the Work Area, right click and Unmark All

5.

6. Delete the Curve Set in the Object tree.

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7. Use the fix wizard to make sure there are no intersecting triangles.

Task 5: Creating volume mesh and identifying bad volume elements

1. Create a volume mesh with the parameters as shown in the image below. Notice volume
mesh information is kept in Metadata (in the Object Tree). You should see two volume meshes
created.

2. Use the Split Non-Manifold Assembly tool (Remesh tab) to split the assembly. Use the
Automatic volume method.

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Exercise 10: Exporting and importing the mesh into a solver

program

Task 1: Generating a mesh with material properties

1. Open Mimics. Go to File > Open project and browse to the “DemoFiles” folder of 3-matic
and open [Link]. Copy the STLs “Femur” and “Implant” to your clipboard.

2. Open 3-matic and press CTRL + V to paste the parts in 3-matic.

3. Go to Remesh > Create Non-manifold to create a matching node interface.

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4. Use Adaptive Remesh (Remesh tab) to improve the surface mesh.

5. Improve the surface mesh by performing a smooth on each surface separately in order
to keep the surface structure. Go to Fix > Smooth.

6. Go to Mark > Wave or press [M]. Use a diameter of 20 and mark the implant head to
simulate the area of contact. Separate the area and rename the surface to “Contact”.

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7. Rename the bottom surface to “Fixed’.

8. To generate a volume mesh, go to Remesh > Create Volume Mesh. Use the
parameters as shown:

9. In 3-matic, select and copy (Ctrl+C) the assembly. Go back to Mimics, where the original
project was open, and press Ctrl+V to paste the volume meshes in the Mimics project.

10. Rename the subvolumes in the FEA tab to avoid confusion. It can help to hide the
subvolumes one by one.

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11. Go to FEA/CFD > Assign Material and select the Femur sub volume and assign the
following material properties:

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12. Select the Implant subvolume and assign it the following homogeneous material properties:

ρ = 4500 [kg/m3]
E = 55000 [MPa]
V = 0.33

Note: For this exercise ANSYS will be used as a solver program. You can find short instructions on how
to import the mesh in other solver programs below.

Task 2: Exporting a file to ANSYS

1. Go to File > Export > Meshes > Ansys, select the part and press Add. Set ANSYS as the output
format. Select the Output file and press Edit and add the surface structure. Press OK to export
the part.

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Task 3: Importing into ANSYS 2021 R2 and solving

1. Open ANSYS® WorkbenchTM

2. Drag the “External Model” component and “Static Structural” analysis to the Project Schematic.

3. Open External Model, with a double click at the Setup button. Browse for the .cdb file generated
by Mimics. Make sure to change the units to mm.

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4. Drag the Setup from the external component to Model of the Static Structural analysis. Then
click on the Update Project button.

5. Double click on Model of the Static Structural analysis to launch Ansys Mechanical.

6. In Ansys Mechanical, at the bottom right of the window, make sure the right unit system is used.

7. Right click on Connections to insert a Connection Group.

8. After the Connection Group folder is created, right click on it, and select Create Automatic
Connections from the context menu. The Create Automatic Connections will auto detect the
possible contact pairs in the model.

9. Now, a Contact Region is created. Select the Contact Region and change the contact definition
from Bonded to Frictional and use a Friction coefficient of 0.6.

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10. To assign the material properties, right click on the Static Structural and insert a command.
Right click on the Command and Import the .txt file that was exported by Mimics.

11. Add a Fixed Support at the bottom of the femur. Change the Scoping Method to Named
Selection and choose FIXED(External Model) from the dropdown list.

12. Insert a Force component.

13. Change the Scoping Method to Named Selections and choose CONTACT(External Model) from
the dropdown list.
Change the Define by parameter to Components. Disable X Component and Y Component by
clicking on the parameters.
Add a force of 2800 N at the negative Z-direction on the contact surface of the implant.

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14. Insert the equivalent (von-Mises) stress for the solution. Lastly, on the Static Structural, click
on the right mouse button and select “Solve” from the context menu.

Task 4: Use ACT to convert surface structures in Ansys 2021 R2

Starting from Ansys 2021 R2, Named Selections imported from .cdb file will no longer be recognized as
geometry or face(s) and therefore will not be selectable with Geometry Selection as Scoping Method.
Selection can still be made using the Named Selection as Scoping Method.

An Ansys Customization Toolkit (ACT) extension has been made available as a workaround to convert
node named selections to element face named selections The ACT can be used in case the element
face named selection is preferred or required in the analysis workflow in Ansys.

1. Browse to the DemoFiles folder in the 3-matic installation folder. Open the Ansys ACT folder
and copy all files (Node_EFace_NS.xml and Node_EFace_NS).

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2. Locate the ACT extension folder in Ansys installation folder. Paste the Node_EFace_NS.xml
file in this folder and add the Node_EFace_NS file as a subfolder. Example:

3. Launch Ansys Workbench 2021 R2. Open Manage Extension from the Extension menu

4. NodeToElemFaceNS is available in the Extension list. Check the box.

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5. Launch Ansys Mechanical. An additional ribbon tab and button named NtoEF_NS is added to
the interface.

6. Click the NtoEF_NS button to convert the nodal named selections to element face named
selections automatically. Example:

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Task 5: Importing into ANSYS® Workbench™ version 14.0 or earlier

1. Open ANSYS® WorkbenchTM

2. Drag the “Finite Element Modeler” component and “Static Structural” analysis to the Project
Schematic.

3. Right click on Model from the Finite Element Modeler > Add input mesh > Browse… Make sure
your input is on Mechanical APDL input (*.cdb). and select the file generated before.

Note: The ANSYS® Finite Element Modeler can also read ABAQUS Input (*.inp) files and for
this file format it manages to use the surfaces as named selections.

4. Drag the Setup from the external component to Model of the Static Structural analysis. Then
update the project.

5. Adding the material properties is similar as explained above in Task 2 for version 2021 R2.

Task 6: Exporting a file to ABAQUS/CAETM

1. In Mimics, export the volume meshes to ABAQUS .inp file.

Go to File > Export > Meshes > Abaqus. In the Mesh tab, select Femur_non-manifold_assembly
and click on the Add button.
Check the Create Assembly checkbox to have assembly and instances created automatically
in ABAQUS upon import. Press OK button to export the part.

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Task 7: Importing into ABAQUS/CAETM and solving

1. Launch ABAQUS. Click on File > Import > Model to load the Femur_non-manifold_assembly.inp
into Abaqus.

Note: Mesh, elements and nodes imported from Mimics and 3-matic do not have any associated
geometry in Abaqus, hence they will be classified as orphan mesh, elements, and nodes.

2. In Model Database, expand the Models tree and the Sections tree to assign material to the 11
sections imported from the inp file.

Note: A section contains information about the properties of a part or a region of a part. When
a section is being assigned to a part, ABAQUS automatically assigns that section to each
instance of the part and the instances will have the properties specified in that section.

Click on Section-1-ES_VOLUME_MAT0. Dismiss the missing material warning message. The

materials created in Mimics (Task 1: Step 11&12) are shown in the drop-down list. Select the
corresponding material that is labelled with the same number, e.g. MAT0 for MATERIAL0. In
this case, select FEMUR_NON_MANIFOLD_ASSEMBLY_MATERIAL0.

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3. Repeat step 4 to the rest of the sections. Select the corresponding material that is labelled with
the same number as the section.

4. Double click on Steps to create a new step with the following setting to run a simple static and
general analysis. Name the Step as Loading Step. Click Continue.

Note: Simulation in ABAQUS is carried out in a series of steps. ABAQUS TM will execute these
steps one after another. There will be two steps in this example - the Initial Step which every
simulation must have and is created by Abaqus by default, and the second step is the loading
step where the load will be applied.

In the Edit Step window leave all the parameter settings intact as default and click OK.

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5. Next, double click on BCs to setup Boundary Conditions. Name it as Fixed Surface and choose
Symmetry/Antisymmetry/Encastre as the Types for Selection Step. Click Continue.

Note: Encastre constraints the selected item to be fixed to the ground and have zero degree of
freedom. It cannot translate at x, y or z nor can it rotate about any of those.

Underneath the View port, select Sets in the bottom right to select a region.

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Choose the FEMUR_NON-MANIFOLD_ASSEMBLY_1.NS_FIXED in the Region Selection

window to inform ABAQUS that the bottom of the Femur bone is fixed to the ground. Only the
top part of the femur bone and implant are free to move during the simulation. Click Continue.

Now comes the last step in setting up the Boundary Conditions. Select ENCASTRE and click
OK.
In the View port, ABAQUS marks the boundary conditions on FEMUR_NON-
MANIFOLD_ASSEMBLY_1.NS_FIXED. Now, the entire bottom has been fixed in place.

6. Next, double click on Loads in the database tree to define the external load to be applied.
Choose Concentrated Force as the Type for Selected Step. Click Continue.

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Select FEMUR_NON-MANIFOLD_ASSEMBLY_NS_CONTACT from the list to be the contact

surface. Click Continue.

Specify a load. Enter -2800 in the z-direction (CF3). The specified load will be applied at
negative z-direction to FEMUR_NON-MANIFOLD_ASSEMBLY_NS_CONTACT. Click OK.
In the view port, ABAQUSTM indicates the direction of the load on the selected nodes with arrows.

7. Go to the Analysis tree and then to the Jobs container. Double click on Jobs to create a new
job to run the simulation. Name the job as LoadImplant. Click Continue.

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In the Edit Job window, keep all the parameters intact and click Ok. A new job is created.
Right click on the LoadImplant and click Submit to start the analysis.

Once the job is completed, right click on LoadImplant and select Results. In the Results tab,
you will see the outcome of the analysis.

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Task 8: Exporting reference points from 3-matic to ABAQUS/CAE TM

This exercise demonstrates the steps to export points from 3-matic and import them as reference points
in ABAQUS.

1. Load the Femur_non-manifold_assembly file created in Task 1 in 3-matic.

2. Go to Create Extrema Analysis tool in Analyze tab to obtain the highest and lowest point
on the part along the Z-direction of the World Coordinate System.

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3. Check the coordinate of the two extrema points in the Properties page.

4. Go to File > Export > Abaqus, select the Femur_non-manifold-Assembly and the two extrema
points as Entities. Click Apply

5. Launch ABAQUS. Click on File > Import > Model to load the Femur_non-manifold_assembly.inp
into Abaqus.

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6. In the Model tree, expand Femur_non-manifold assembly > Assembly > Features. You will
see two child items, RP-1, and RP-2 in the model tree. From the Viewport, the two points are
at same position on the model as they are in 3-matic.

Exporting a file to COMSOL Multiphysics®

1. File > Export > COMSOL, if you want to export the surface boundaries to COMSOL
Multiphysics®, it is recommended to export both the surface and volume mesh (example 3-
matic).

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2. Open COMSOL Multiphysics®.

3. Create a new model by using the “Model Wizard”.

4. Select “3D” as Space Dimension.

5. Select the Physics (e.g., select “Solid Mechanics (solid)” in the “Structural Mechanics” module)
and click Add. Continue by clicking Study.

6. Select the Study (e.g., Select Stationary ( )) and click Done.

7. In the Model Tree click “Geometry” and select “mm” as Length unit.

8. From the menu select the “Mesh” tab and click “Import”. Via the file browser navigate to
the mphtxt file generated before. Click “Open” and click “Import” to start the import process.

Exporting a file to MSC Patran®

1. In 3-matic go to File > Export > Patran or Nastran (example 3-matic).

2. Open MSC Patran®.

3. File > Import…

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Set Object to Model.

Set Source to Neutral (.out) or MD Natran Input (.nas, .bdf).
Select the file generated by 3-matic and press Apply.

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/ Chapter 6: Texturing

Introduction to the Texturing module

The Texturing module offers the possibility to apply 2D/3D textures on a surface. This will be done based
on a picture (*.Jpeg, *.Bmp or *.png).
The first step in designing a texture is creating a UV map and applying a 2D texture on it. Secondly, to
obtain a 3D texture, an offset to every pixel of the picture can be given. This offset-value is depending
on the black/grey/white color in the picture.

Exercise 1: Applying a texture on a pedal.

Task 1: Creating a UV Map

1. File > Open Project > DemoFiles > [Link]

2. Go to the UV map and open the UV Map operation. As Entities, select the surface as
shown below. Check the Launch UV page parameter to open the UV Page after creating the
UV map.

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Task 2: Creating a 2D texture

1. Go to the Texturing tab and select the UV Based Texture operation. Select the Image
parameter and browse to the TextureLibrary folder in the installation folder. Select the
012_Piramid-[Link] image. Uncheck the Tile image parameter to understand how a single
image is represented in the UV page. Apply the operation with the settings below. A texture is
created under the UV map entity in the object tree.

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2. The UV Page shows that the size properties set for the UV region correspond perfectly with
the amount of UV squares/image tiles.

3. Go to the property page of the 012_Piramid-[Link] texture and check the Tile image
parameter. Select UV Region (Surface) in the object tree, go to the UV Map tab and select

Enter/Exit UV page to close the UV page.

4.

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5. Go to the Texturing tab and select the Fade Texture operation. Select the 012_Piramid-
[Link] texture as input texture. As Fading guides, select the contour of the surface on
which the texture is applied. To select this contour, highlight the Fading guides parameter and
left click on the contour in the work area. An entity-list will show, select the contour entity.
Apply the settings as shown below.

Note: Fading a texture toward its borders will create a more realistic 3D effect afterwards.

6. As a result, a new UV map is created with the specific faded texture image. Delete the original
UV Map.

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7. Select the faded texture under the new map called 012_Piramid-multi.png_fade and go to the
properties page of the texture entity. In the property page, set White offset to 1.0000 and keep
the Black offset as 0.0000. Finally check ON the 3D Preview checkbox. Now a 3D Preview of
the texture will replace the previous black and white texture in the Work Area.

Task 3: Converting the 2D texture to a 3D texture

1. Go to the Texturing tab and open the 3D Texture operation. Use the faded texture to create
the 3D effect. Apply the settings as shown below. Note: Checking Use existing values will use
the offset values already preassigned to selected texture.

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Exercise 2: Applying leather texture on a cover model

Task 1: Creating UV Map

1. File > Open Project > DemoFiles > [Link]

2. Go to the UV Map tab and open the UV Map operation. As Entities, select the 3 surfaces
as shown below. Check the Launch UV Page parameter to open the UV Page after creating the
UV map.

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Observations:
a UV regions are not aligned upon parameterization and the connections are not preserved.
In the standard UV Based Texture this would result in discontinuous textures across the
different UV Borders. For these UV regions automatic alignment is also not possible, hence
may need more effort to apply alignments manually.

UV Regions are not aligned across borders

b UV Region (Face (426)-3-1-1-1) has some stretching that can only be improved manually
with better UV mapping. This stretching will further make the standard UV Based Texture
results have disproportionate leather cell sizes.
c Using the UV Based Texture approach would require the users to manually adjust the sizes
of the UV regions to ensure the leather cells are sized appropriately on the desired surface.

Example of the result for the UV Based Texture operation with the same UV Map and the
001_leather.png texture from the TextureLibrary

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Task 2: Applying leather texture on the UV Map

1. Go to Texturing and launch the Procedural Leather Texture operation. As entity select the
cover part and set the parameters as shown below. Increasing the texture resolution will yield
better quality texture on the stretched regions.

2. There are 3 new UV Maps with unique textures in all of them generated. Although all textures
are in separate UV Maps, the textures are continuous across different borders.

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Observations:

a. The generated leather cells have uniform sizes across the different regions.
b. The generate texture while unique between the different regions still forms a continuous
leather texture across the different borders.
c. The cell sizes can be controlled by varying the Cell size and Cell size factor parameters in
the Procedural Leather texture operation directly without manipulation the UV Region
sizes.

Continuous leather texture across the unaligned borders

d. The texture resolution is poorer in the stretched regions than the other regions while the
overall leather cell sizes are still uniform. This can be further improved by increasing the
Texture resolution value in the Procedural Leather Texture operation.
Note: Increasing the Texture resolution may require more computational resources and
time to generate the texture.

Poorer texture resolution at stretched regions

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Task 3: Showing the 3D Preview for the leather textures with offsets

1. Multi select (using the CTRL key + LMB) all the new texture entities from Object Tree to show
the multiple selection properties page.

2. Assign the White Offset and Show 3D Preview as shown below. Check the 3D preview field to
show the 3D preview of each texture.

3. Observe the 3D preview in the Work Area on the cover part for the leather texture effect.

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Note: Since converting the leather texture to mesh through the 3D Texture operation maybe very
expensive computationally and results in very heavy mesh entity, users are recommended to assign the
texture offsets using the Edit Texture Properties operation and then user Materialise Build Processors
for slice-based printing.

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/ Chapter 7: Topology optimization

Exercise 1: Import and clean-up of raw data
Task 1: Surface manipulation of raw topology data

1. File > Open Project > DemoFiles > GE Bracket [Link]

The raw topology data consists of one big surface, without any splits. Due to the rough
meshing, the quality of the screw holes is completely lost on the raw data. The easiest way
to regain the good quality, is to:
• Fill up the holes
• Smoothen the rough model
• Create clean holes using the Design Space

2. Go to View > Filled with Triangles Edges to change the triangle view or alternatively to
modify only the shading mode of a specific part, select the part and change the Shading
Mode from the properties page.

3. Go to the Fix tab and select the Reduce operation. Reduce will lower the number of
triangles, considering a certain geometrical. Apply the operation with the settings as shown
below. The parameters indicated in yellow are visible if the expert mode is turned on. This
mode can be activated by clicking on Expert Mode in the bottom of the 3-matic window.

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4. Open the Mark tab select Wave operation. Change the Brush diameter to 0.5 mm in
the operation page. Mark each area in a hole with the mark brush.

Tip: use CTRL + marking brush to unmark triangles

5. Highlight the Marked Triangles in the object tree and press Delete. The meshed model now
contains holes, so it is not possible to produce the part in this state. The yellow lines are
bad contours which indicate that the mesh is not closed. Due to these open surfaces, you
can look inside the part (red surfaces). In the Object Tree you can see a list of the bad
contours.

6. Select the Fix Wizard in the Fix tab for automatic STL fixing.
• First, the Fix Wizard provides an overview of all the errors present in the STL file.
• Select the part that you want to be analyzed by clicking on the part name in the
Object Tree or immediately on the model itself in the work area.

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• Press Update to see the different kinds of errors. Ignore overlapping and
intersecting triangles in case they would appear.
• Press Follow Advice to fix the part automatically. This is a step-based approach so
it may take several clicks to get the part fixed.

The current mesh of the raw topology data is very rough. A first step that can be used to remodel the
part, is to wrap a new STL surface around the existing one. In later steps, the wrapped surface can be
further smoothened and cleaned, so a clean model can be exported.

7. Go to the Design tab and select the Wrap operation. This operation will wrap a new
STL surface around the selected part using the next parameters.

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Next, the overall surface can be smoothened to gain a more organic result. The smoothing algorithm
gets rid of all sharp zones on the surface of the part.

8. Go to the Fix tab and select the Smooth operation. Ensure the Use compensation
checkbox (Expert mode) is checked. This will apply an additional offset after the smoothing,
so less thickness is lost in the model. Yet, the smoothing effect can be a bit weakened.

To further refine the mesh, use a combination of:

• Fix > Reduce
• Fix > Subdivide
• Fix > Smooth

The overall goal of this process was to make sure that the organic part of the model is sufficiently smooth,
so it represents a clean model to print, and the surface is clean enough to be exported as NURBS.
The smoother the mesh, the lower the tolerances can be put to export towards CAD surfaces.

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Task 2: Redesign and export of CAD-like entities

1. Go to the Design tab and select the Boolean Intersection operation. As Entities, select
the design space and the cleaned mesh from the previous steps.

The resulting part is a clean STL file that fits in the given Design Space and contains the same surface
splits on the boundary surfaces. Next, the organic surface is sufficiently smooth to patch it with NURBS
that stick close to the original topology optimized result.

For the more experienced user, more analytical surfaces can be made for an even better result. These
advanced design operations are not considered as the goal of this tutorial.

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To properly calculate the strength of the optimized part, you need to export a clean mesh towards
simulation packages. Using the Remesh module, you can perform all the prerequisites to properly
analyze the part in FEA.

2. Go to the Remesh tab and select the Adaptive Remesh operation. Apply the settings
as shown below.

Once a uniform surface mesh is generated, you can generate solid elements within the STL volume.

3. Go to the Remesh tab and select the Create Volume Mesh operation. To generate solid
elements within the part, the STL cannot contain any bad contour nor intersecting triangles.
Use the Fix Wizard to analyze and fix these potential errors. Apply Create Volume Mesh
with the settings as shown below.

4. Use the section plane in the z-direction to visualize the volume elements inside the model.

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5. To export the mesh towards different FEA packages, go to File > Export > Abaqus / Ansys
/ Nastran / Patran / Fluent / Comsol. For more details, see the Remesh chapter.

If the part has been remodeled in a proper way, you can also export it as an .iges or .step file, using the
CAD Link operation in the File backstage. To perform this step, you need to be sure the following
requirements are met:
• Surfaces must be as smooth as possible:
o Small triangles with a very smooth alignment.
o The more accurate the mesh, the lower the tolerance while exporting towards CAD.
• Intersecting and overlapping triangles must be removed:
o Use the Fix Wizard to automatically fix these.
o The presence of intersecting and overlapping triangles can make the export to CAD
surfaces impossible on those zones.
• Small sharp artefacts of the mesh might result in a hotspot of surfaces:
o Make sure you remove them properly. Use Remove Spikes operation from Fix tab or
Local Smooth from Finish tab.
Once the above-mentioned issues are removed, open the CAD Link operation in the File backstage to
export your file.

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/ Chapter 8: Lattice
Exercise 1: Creating a porous bone prosthesis
This exercise shows how to create a porous bone prosthesis with variable density. The use of porous
designs enhances bone and tissue ingrowth.

Task 1: Prepare femur prosthesis

1. Go to File > Open Project > DemoFiles > [Link]

2. First, the model needs to be segmented in multiple patches to cut a prosthesis-like part
out of the femur. This will be done twice as each segment will be designed with different pore
sizes. Go to the Finish tab and choose the tool Trim. Trim out the top part of the bone like it’s
shown in the picture below. Preserve inner and outer method should be selected.

Check the object tree. There are 2 new parts are created: femur-1 and femur-2

3. Apply Trim again as shown on the picture below. Make sure femur-2 is selected and Create
new parts checkbox is off. Once applied, close the operation page.

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Task 2: Create porous structure

1. Hide the part of the bone that is not needed for porous structure design. Go to the Object Tree,
right-click on femur-1 and select Hide.

2. Go to the Object tree and double click on femur-2. Rename it to Lattice_volume. This part will be
used to create porous structure of the bone-prosthesis.

3. Go to the Lattice tab and select the Voronoi Based operation. This tool allows users to create
random porous structures with a full control over pore sizes and density.
As Entity select the Lattice_volume. Set the lattice type to Surface and volume to ensure porous
structures are created on the surface and inside the volume. Set the other parameters as shown
below.

To specify the Local lattice parameters, select the surface of the femur head from the object
tree (Lattice_volume>Surface list>Inside->femur-2 >Surface), set the Target pore radius to 0.7
and the Thickness to 0.7. Click Add button to add the local lattice parameters to the overview
list.

4. Navigate to the Object Tree, right-click the surface list from the Lattice_volume and select
Empty List from the context menu. The porous structure is created with variable pore sizes and
looks like on the picture below.

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5. Merge all output graphs in a single graph entity. Right-click on the Graph List to open the
context menu and select Merge all graphs in set.

Task 3: Convert lattice to organic mesh

1. Go to the Lattice tab and select Lattice to Mesh. Select Organic mesh type.
Set the parameters like on the picture below:

2. Once the lattice is generated, show the femur-1 part again.

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Exercise 2: Design of a filter using lattice structures

During this exercise, a filter will be designed with two different types of lattice structures. A quad based
lattice structure on the outer-most surface and the inner-most surface. The middle volume will be filled
by unit cells-based lattice. Afterwards, proper connections between them will be assured. The following
images show the different lattice structures created on each surface and volume.

Figure a. Figure b. Figure c.

The start file contains 4 parts:

- Outer surface and Inner Quad surfaces (figure a, c): used to create the quad based lattice on
these surfaces.
- Unit structure surface (figure b): used to fill a single unit cell structure repeated in the solid
volume of this part.
- Top Bottom solid surface: not modified during the project.

Task 1: Creating a quad based lattice

1. Go to File > Open Project > DemoFiles > [Link]

2. In the Object Tree, select all the parts except Inner Quad surface. Right-click on one of the selected
parts and select Hide.

3. Go to the Lattice tab and select the Quad Based operation. As Entities, select the Inner quad
surface part and set the Target edge length to 5 mm. Click Apply.

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4. Go to the object tree and select the Inner quad surface part. Right-click on the Surface list and select
Empty List to remove the remaining surfaces of the part.

5. Repeat the same steps for the part Outer surface but set the Target edge length to 8 mm.

6. To visualize the results of both steps, select the part Inner Quad surface and part Outer surface and
Show them.

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Task 2: Creating a unit cell based lattice

1. In the object Tree, select all the parts except Unit structure surface. Right-click on one of the
selected parts and select show.

2. Go to File > Import Part > UnitCellLibrary > [Link]

3. Go to the Lattice tab and select the Unit Cell Based operation. Use the settings as shown
below and press Apply. A new part is created named Unit structure surface with graphs.

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Task 3: Make graph connections

1. Go to the object tree and show the Unit structure surface with graph part and the Inner quad
surface part. (Right-click > show)

2. Go to the object tree and expand the Inner quad surface part. Open the Graph List and Merge
Mantle-0 Graph and Mantle-1 Graph (select both > right-click > Merge). The merged part is
called Mantle-1 Graph.

3. Select the Connect Graphs operation from the Lattice tab. As Source graphs, select the
quad graph ‘Mantle-1 Graph’ from the Graph List of the part Inner quad surface. As Target
graphs, select Graph from the Graph List of the part Unit structure surface with graphs. Set the
Number of connections to 3 to make dense connections between both graphs. Apply the
settings as shown below.

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Note: The minimum and maximum connection radius helps to specify the distance that the
operation will look for in the nearest neighboring points on the target graph to make connections.

4. Repeat the same steps for merging Mantle-1 Graph and Mantle-0 Graph of Outer surface. Then
Connect the quad graph Mantle-1 Graph from the Graph List of the part Outer surface with the
Graph of the part Unit structure surface with graphs. Set the Number of connections to 1 and
increase the Maximum connection radius to create less dense connections between both
graphs. Apply the settings as shown below.

5. Hide all the parts except Outer surface, Inner quad surface, Top bottom solid surface and Unit
structure surface with graphs.

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Task 4: Assign graph properties

1. Go to the Lattice tab and select the Uniform operation. As Entities, select Outer surface and
assign a Thickness of 1.2 mm to indicate the diameter of the beams.

2. Repeat the above steps but with different parameters for Unit structure surface with graphs part,
and Inner quad surface’ part as shown below. For each graph set, the parameters can be viewed
in the properties page. For example, the parameter for the Mantle_1 Graph of the part Outer
surface are shown.

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The part is ready to be sent for Materialise Build Processor for slice based printing.

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Task 5: Create regular mesh from graphs (Optional)

1. Go to the Lattice tab and select the Lattice to Mesh operation. As Entities, select Mantle-1
Graph and Graph from the Outer surface part. Set the parameters as shown below.

This operation can be repeated for all the graphs to convert them to meshes. To avoid memory issues,
it is not recommended to use the Convert Lattice to Mesh operation when the design is big and
complicated. In such cases, it is recommended to assign graph properties via the Uniform Thickness
tool and then use the Materialise Build Processor for slice based printing.

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/ Chapter 9: Reverse Engineering

Exercise 1: Anatomical Reverse Engineering

Medical imaging data, like CT or MRI, can be segmented to create accurate, patient-realistic, 3D models.
However, these complex, organic 3D models are generated in the STL file format, and this format is not
welcomed by traditional CAD software. Therefore 3-matic has an Anatomical Reverse Engineering
module. This module creates solid (C0-continuity) IGES files from your anatomical models. And what
is even better; it does so completely automatically.

1. Import the project ‘’[Link]” into 3-matic (File > Import Part > DemoFiles)

2. Go to the Automatic Rectangular option in the Surface tab and select Femur in the Entities
selection box. The Part Complexity is measured automatically.

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3. Go to the File backstage. Select Export > Iges. Since the patching is already done, the part only
needs to be exported to Iges, so Patching can be checked OFF.

Exercise 2: CAD link

The CAD link operation of 3-matic provides reverse
engineering based on the surface structure. Every surface
will be considered separately to convert into a CAD-face
according to the following principle:

▪ First feature recognition is done. If a surface can

be recognized as an analytical primitive such as
plane, cylinder, revolve surface, NURBS … then
this surface will be reversed to a primitive face.
▪ If feature recognition fails, e.g.: on freeform
(scanned) surfaces, automatic patching will start.
This will split up the surface into different patches,
which then can be converted into NURBS faces.

This principle requires an initial surface segmentation of

STL files before conversion. Using 3-matic, this surface structure is automatically generated and
preserved in all operations. Boolean operations, CAD operations … all will preserve and/or generate a
surface structure. On the other hand, surface segmentation can be done as well using automatic and
manual operations such as marking and curve operations.

In case the surface structure contains a lot of small surfaces which don’t link with the analytical structures
to be recognized, it is advised to ignore the surface structure by disabling the Preserve surface structure
parameter.

1. Go to File > Open Project > DemoFiles > Lion_Cavity.mxp. This project contains one part, called
‘Lion Cavity’. The part contains a surface structure, which is preserved in the project file.

2. Since the parting plane surface contains a lot of sharp triangles, it is advised to improve the
triangulation of this surface. Go to Fix > Improve mesh. A better input mesh will result in a better
patched result.

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3. Go to the CAD Link operation in the File backstage.

4. As Entity, select the Lion Cavity part. This operation will convert a file from STL to STEP or
IGES (Reverse engineering). The Border tolerance parameter differs form part to part and can
be estimated by pressing the Estimate button. Set the Patch size by pressing the Estimate
button as well. This parameter determines the size of the patches. The patch size is used to
split the surfaces that were not recognized as a primitive feature.
Clicking the Preview button already executes the first step in the reverse engineering process:
the feature recognition and automatic patching is already done. Upon applying the operation,
the actual conversion to IGES or STEP is done, and the file is written to the specified location.

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5. The result of the CAD link operation is a STEP or IGES file in the specified location. The logger
window is giving feedback on the reverse engineering. From the logger, it is shown that 6 planes
and 4 cylinders have been recognized in the part, based on the surface information. The
‘freeform’ surface has been converted into 39 NURBS patches.

Note: To be able to create a STEP or IGES file from an STL file, make sure the surface is as smooth as
possible, there are no intersecting and overlapping triangles and small sharp mesh artefacts are
removed.

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/ Chapter 10: Statistical Shape Model

General introduction
Statistical shape models (SSMs) are commonly used to describe and analyze deformable objects like
human anatomy. It is assumed that every object shape is a deformation of a reference shape.
A typical workflow is depicted:

Tips and tricks

- It is advised to have a similar triangulation of your input parts. This improves the results of
the Registration with Scaling and Warp Part operations. Choose upfront a relatively average-
looking shape as template and pay extra attention to its mesh. If needed, adapt the mesh with
uniform remesh to optimize even more. The mesh of your template shape determines the
mesh of your final SSM.

- A good initial alignment decreases computation time and improves the accuracy of the
Warp Part operation. Use the Registration with Scaling or other alignment tools to obtain a
good initial alignment

- Point correspondence between input parts is needed to create a statistical shape model.

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Exercise 1: Creating a statistical shape model from the femur

Task 1: Warp the original parts using a template part
1. Go to File > Open Project > DemoFiles > SSM [Link].
Femur 1 represents the reference/template part. The template part deforms to represent all
other Original parts. This is achieved using the Warp Part operation and the results are shown
in the Warped part group. Throughout this exercise, femur 5 is used as example to
demonstrate how to obtain the femur 5_warped entity.

2. Use Registration with Scaling from the SSM tab to align femur 1_template (in the group
Warped parts) and femur 5 (in the group Original parts).

Note: To obtain the best results, Uniform Remesh parts upfront to obtain a similar triangulation.

3. Deform the template part by warping it to the femur 5 part. Open the SSM tab, click on
Warp Part. A new part named femur 5_warped is created. This new part has the same
triangulation as the template part but represents the shape of the femur 5 part. This assures
the point correspondence which is required to create a statistical shape model later.

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4. Repeat step 2 & 3 for all the parts in the group Original parts to obtain a list of warped parts
with point correspondence (see Warped parts group).

Task 2: Create a statistical shape model and recreate a patient

1. Create a statistical shape model using the Create SSM operation from the SSM tab. Use
the Procrustes alignment method to eliminate position differences. Using Procrustes, all parts
are aligned, rotated, and translated upfront with respect to a reference shape to ensure only
the shape deformations are captured.

Go to the SSM property page and adjust the coefficients of one of the modes to see how they
influence the shape of the SSM model.

2. Use the Instance to Part operation to recreate parts with desired coefficient combinations.
Update the coefficients via the operation page before converting the SSM instance to a part.
The next example shows respectively the shapes of coefficient combinations (2,0,0,0),
(0,2,0,0) and (0,0,2,0).

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To reduce the influence of the chosen template shape, it is good practice to have a second iteration
where you use the average shape from your SSM as template.

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