About a User-Defined Analysis
You use user-defined analyses (UDA) to create measurements and analyses beyond those on the Analysis menu. A user-defined analysis consists of a group of features that you create to make a desired measurement. This group of features is referred to as a Construction group. You can think of a Construction group as a definition for making measurement. You can save and reuse this definition as needed. To define a Construction group, you create a local group whose last feature is an Analysis feature.
If the Construction group has a field point as its first feature, the analysis can be performed at any selected point on the domain or on the entire domain of the field point. When the analysis is performed on the entire domain, the UDA behaves as a curve or surface analysis. For this, the system temporarily forms the construction at each point of the domain and then displays the results similar to the results of standard curve and surface analyses. If the UDA is not based on a field point, it represents a simple measurement that you can apply as any other standard measurement.
Performing a user-defined analysis involves two main procedures:
• Create a Construction group—Create all necessary features that you will use for the required measurement and then group these features using the Local Group. The last item selected for creating a Construction group must be an Analysis feature.
• Apply a Construction group to create a UDA—This is an actual computation. Click Analysis > User-Defined Analysis and use the User-Defined Analysis dialog box to perform the analysis.
Rules and Recommendations for Using the UDA Functionality
You use UDAs to create customized measurements to investigate characteristics of the model. With these measurements, you can find modeling solution that satisfy user-defined constraints.
Note the following rules and recommendations:
• Geometry that you create to define a UDA Construction group (a field point, datum plane, and so on) is intended for this purpose only. Do not use these features for regular modeling activities.
• After you create a Construction group, suppress it to make sure its features are not used for modeling purposes. When suppressed, a Construction group is still selectable for UDA purposes.
• To avoid using construction group features for modeling, you may need to create some features twice—once for modeling purposes and once for UDA purposes.