<!DOCTYPE html
  PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<!--
Copyright (c) 2006 UGS Corp.

All Rights Reserved.

This software and related documentation are proprietary to UGS Corp.
-->
<html>
   <head>
      <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
      <title>Sparking Area Overview</title>
      <script language="javaScript">
        abridged="false";
        displayConditions=new Array();
      </script>
      <link type="text/css" href="../css/main_styles.css" rel="stylesheet">
   </head>
   <body class="bodydocs" onload="top.pageLoader()" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
      <div class="title_topic4" id="xps10_pagetitle">Sparking Area Overview</div>
      <hr noshade="true">
      <table cellspacing="4" align="center">
         <colgroup span="1">
            <col span="1" width="98*">
            <col span="1" width="103*">
            <col span="1" width="99*">
            <col span="1" width="98*">
         </colgroup>
         <tr valign="top">
            <td bgcolor="#f7f7f7" colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_td">Overview</p>
            </td>
            <td bgcolor="#f7f7f7" colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_td"><a class="links" href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="top.openFile('nxelectrode_design/nx_electrode_proc_workarea.html');return(false);">How To</a></p>
            </td>
            <td bgcolor="#f7f7f7" colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_td"><a class="links" href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="top.openFile('nxelectrode_design/nx_electrode_options_workarea.html');return(false);">Options</a></p>
            </td>
            <td bgcolor="#f7f7f7" colspan="1" rowspan="1">
               <p class="para_td"><a class="links" href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="top.openFile('nxelectrode_design/nx_electrode_reltopics_workarea.html');return(false);">Related Topics</a></p>
            </td>
         </tr>
      </table><br><p class="para_topic">The <b class="uiTerm">Sparking Area</b> is the region on a part model that contains the surfaces that will be cut using EDM. In actual application, the electrode head passes over the area of a billet or unfinished piece of material and dynamically burns material away until the designed surface contours are achieved. There are several powerful modeling tools shared by the <b class="uiTerm">NX Tooling</b> products that allow you to easily design the electrode <b class="uiTerm">Sparking Area</b>, or <b class="uiTerm">sparking head</b>. 
      </p>
      <p class="para_topic">To create the <b class="uiTerm">Sparking Area</b>, use the <b class="uiTerm">NX Tooling</b> suite of modeling tools. Many of these tools are designed specifically to build a box within selected face boundaries and Boolean the box into the desired shape and size.  In electrode design, these dedicated tools are used to define the void that will be burned away by the electrode head. 
      </p>
      <p class="para_topic">For more information, see <a class="links" href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="top.openFile('nxelectrode_design/tooling_tools_shared.html');return(false);">NX Tooling Shared Tools</a>.
      </p>
   </body>
</html>