2.5 KiB
Expand Spacing
Plate > Expand Spacing moves selected parts by translation only. The first selected part is the anchor for selected pairs; the later selected member moves, and nonselected parts remain fixed. The plate retains its own EdgeSpacing floor; the command does not change PartSpacing or EdgeSpacing.
Every selected/selected and selected/nonselected pair has an operation-entry clearance floor, measured against material with cutouts subtracted. A later move may reuse slack opened by an earlier move, but it cannot reduce a pair below its own starting gap. Existing overlaps are accepted for attempted separation; a remaining overlap is reported as a violation, not a successful positive gap. Geometry whose material side is unresolved at sub-scale is conservatively reported as a violation when native extents intersect; that negative marker is not a measured penetration depth. An unchanged selected part already outside the work area also yields an edge violation and zero credited spacing. Temporarily blocked pairs are retried after another part moves, while a pass without positive movement stops the relaxation. An individual violation's BlockedByEdge flag is true only when the work-area edge is the first limiting cause; the desktop status currently displays a blocked-pair count, not those individual causes.
Probes run on scratch poses. Each trial translation is clipped against blocking material along its entire straight path, including cutout walls and regenerated open cut-off paths; a remote cut-off does not pin an unrelated move. Initially overlapping convex line profiles and complete native disks can take a certified direct separating path, including a safe partial move when the plate edge prevents a full exit; unsupported or ambiguous overlap paths stay put and remain reported. Complete native disks use analytic clearance rather than interpreting a shallow arc overlap as a positive polygon gap. When a part touches a cutout wall and the usual nearest-boundary direction makes no safe progress, the tool tries the opposite direction through the same checks. Tiny clamp keep-outs use tolerance-free material occupancy and a conservative native-bound motion limit when tolerant geometry cannot certify them. Cancellation before application leaves the live layout unchanged; Separate never changes it. The desktop command is synchronous and has no Cancel dialog or automatic save. A bounded search reports the spacing it found, not an optimum. See docs/geometry/directional-slides.md for directional contact behavior.