Skip to main content
Feature Extraction fits surfaces to a volume and stores them as a feature set. 3D Auto-Dimensioning measures those surfaces. It does not measure raw voxels. In Dimensioning Mode, Features opens a workflow. A detail slider and live readouts update as you drag, so you can see what the feature set will resolve before you run it. Choose Single material or Multi-material for the surfaces you want. Author a Feature Set: open Features, set detail with the slider, and review Resolution, Voxel size, Smallest radius, and Thinnest wall before you run extraction.

​
What comes back

Extraction runs once on the volume you select. Every ROI on that volume inherits the feature set. Editing an ROI does not re-run it. A feature is one of:
  • Plane
  • Cylinder — including large cylinders and threads
  • Cone
  • Fillet
  • Chamfer
  • Sphere
Features whose area falls under the cutoff are inactive. Inactive features stay out of datum and GD&T pickers. Manual Feature Authoring adds planes and cylinders by hand. It does not author cones, fillets, or chamfers.
Results on a new extraction look different from an older feature set, including on parts you have already checked. Re-run the datums and GD&T checks that depend on the replaced features.

​
Materials

Single material finds features on the densest material and ignores other surfaces, such as a fixture. Multi-material takes a material count. Voyager finds features on the densest materials and ignores the rest. All finds features on every surface. Metal scans produce fewer false surfaces than earlier extractions, and an uploaded grey-scale volume can return a usable feature set. A mixed assembly is still harder than a single material. If a surface you need is missing, raise the material count, then look at what noise came with it. Minimum contrast is in Advanced. Leave it alone unless a faint surface is missing or a noisy one should be ignored.

​
Run Feature Extraction

1

Open Dimensioning Mode

Switch to Dimensioning Mode.
2

Open Features

Choose Features in the Toolbar and select the volume.
3

Set detail

Drag the detail slider. Resolution, Voxel size, Smallest radius, and Thinnest wall update as you drag. Finer detail resolves small pins, thin rims, and threads. Coarser detail is faster when you mainly need large planes.
4

Set materials

Choose Single material for one part, or Multi-material and set how many of the densest materials to keep. All includes every surface.
5

Submit

Run extraction. Planes, cylinders, and the other surfaces appear on the volume. Click the feature set in the tree to read the settings it was run with.

​
Algorithm v20 or newer

Manual Feature Authoring requires algorithm v20 or newer. On an older extraction the authoring controls are greyed out and a tooltip explains why. Re-run extraction to replace that feature set.