Regions

What you’ll learn

• Creating regions: Define a region by selecting entities on the model.
• Entities and tags: Identify entities by their dimension and unique tag.
• Computed regions: Combine existing regions with boolean operations.
• Geometry selector: Select many entities at once by size or bounding box.
• Pick with rule: Select entity tags by list, text input, or range.

Regions in Quanscient Allsolve are sets of geometric entities that let you reference and group parts of a geometry — for example, to assign materials or define boundary conditions. A region contains entities of a single dimension only: volumes, surfaces, curves, or points. You cannot mix dimensions within one region.

Example region made up of volumetric entities - Copper

To create a region, select + next to Regions in the Common sidebar. Choose a region type (Volume, Surface, Curve, …) and select entities on the model.

A material target region can also be shared as a region. It is then added to the sidebar, and can be reused elsewhere in your project.

In the video, a new region called Surface is created by selecting 3 surfaces on the propellor model. Then, aluminium is selected as a material for the propellor, and the Aluminium region is shared to the project.

Entities & tags

3D models in Quanscient Allsolve contain four types of geometric entities: volumes, surfaces, curves, and points. Each entity has a unique identifier called a tag, always a positive integer. Use tags to identify and reference entities within Allsolve.

Each dimension has its own running sequence 1, 2, 3, …, so a point, a curve, a surface, and a volume can each carry tag 1.

View entity tags in the Entities list, where you can also toggle the visibility of volumes and surfaces.

Entities list in the Common sidebar.

Computed region

A computed region applies boolean operations to existing regions to create a new region. This reuses regions you have already defined, so you avoid repicking entities manually. This is especially useful in complex geometries with many entities.

The following operations are available:

Union (OR): The union of all the added regions.

Intersection (AND): The intersection of all the added regions.

Difference (A-B): The difference between the two added regions A and B.

Symmetric difference (XOR): The entities present in exactly one of the added regions. This equals the union minus the intersection of all the added regions.

Complement (NOT): The complement of all the added regions — every entity in the geometry that is not present in the added regions.

The chosen Entity type determines whether the computed region contains points, curves, surfaces, or volumes.

A computed region called Insulators, which is a union of the regions Air, Magnets and Steel.

Rule selector

The rule selector is a streamlined way to create a region. It can be used to pick volumes, surfaces, curves or points. Use it when picking many entities by hand would be laborious. The following selectors are available, individually or in combination:

Attribute

In geometries in Allsolve (especially those imported as a STEP file), entities are given attributes. For Allsolve-native geometries, all entities are given at least the attribute name - the name you gave to the entity when building the geometry.

To pick with the attribute rule selector, choose Attribute and Value from the list to select all entities that match. To pick all edge curves on a box, for example, use the name of the box.

Minimum size

Select all entities whose X,Y,Z size exceeds the defined minimum.

Maximum size

Select all entities whose X,Y,Z size stays within the defined maximum.

Bounding box

Select all entities inside a bounding box, defined by two corner points with coordinates Min X, Min Y, Min Z and Max X, Max Y, Max Z.

To assist with selection on the last three of these selectors, use the Pick similar tool. Pick one or more similar entities to autofill the X,Y,Z values for Minimum size, Maximum size, or Bounding box.

Pick with rule

When creating a new region, there is an option to select entity tags with the Pick with rule tool.

The Pick with rule tool has 3 sub-tools inside it:

1. Entities - Select entity tags on the entities list.
2. Text - Type tag IDs as plain text.
3. Range / Interval - Select range / interval to pick tags.

Entities

The Entities sub-tool opens an entities list in the pick with rule pop-up window.

Pick entities on the list by selecting tick boxes for each entity.

Text

The Text sub-tool opens an input field, where you can type tag IDs as plain text.

Separate tag IDs with commas , or sequences of consecutive tags with hyphens -.

Range / Interval

Use the Range / Interval sub-tool by giving Start tag, End tag and Interval.

Here, for example, Start tag = 28, End tag = 36 and Interval = 2 picks five tags: 28, 30, 32, 34, 36. This is exactly the same as typing 28, 30, 32, 34, 36 in the Text sub-tool or selecting these 5 tags in the Entities sub-tool.

Mass rule create

The Mass rule create tool is a parallel to Rule selector -> Attribute. It lets you pick an attribute and create a region for every value, en masse. Regions can be created in any dimension - volume (3), surface (2), curve (1) or point (0).