Many different manufacturing processes are available to build composite structures. Traditional processes are mainly used to fabricate thin or moderately thick laminated structures which can be modeled based on a reference surface, also called a mold surface. In ACP Pre, this is covered by the Oriented Selection Set and Modeling Ply features.

New and alternative processes, such as 3D printing and winding, can produce thick and complex structures. In such cases the approach of building the entire laminate on only one reference surface often proves unfeasible or results in an inaccurate model. The Imported Modeling Ply feature allows you to model laminated structures independent of a reference surface, where the geometrical information (ply extent and so on) is imported from an external source. The lay-up mapping capability, which is part of the Imported Solid Model, is then used to map the Imported Modeling Plies (3D plies) onto a solid mesh. You can employ this workflow in combination with thermal and structural analyses such as linear, transient, or explicit for example.