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Contact Surfaces Dialog

The current vehicle may include contact surfaces used for simulating interaction forces between the vehicle and its occupants or pedestrians.

Contact surfaces are planes defined by 3 corners (the fourth corner is automatically assigned by assuming a parallelogram). Contact surfaces are created using the Contact Surfaces dialog box.

This dialog is used for assigning contact surfaces to the current vehicle. A vehicle may have up to 25 contact surfaces.

This dialog contains the following parameters:

Contact Surface

Select the contact surface from the combo box to edit its properties.

Location

Radio buttons assigning the location attribute of the current surface:

  • Interior — assigns the Interior attribute, used by the simulation model to identify surfaces on the vehicle's interior (occupant simulation).
  • Exterior — assigns the Exterior attribute, used by the simulation model to identify surfaces on the vehicle's exterior (pedestrian simulation).

Bind Material To

Radio buttons determining whether the material is associated with individual vertices, with polygonal areas, or with the whole group. The setting applies to the vehicle's contact-surface set as a whole:

  • Vertex — the material is bound to each vertex.
  • Face — the material is bound to each face (polygonal area).
  • Group — the material is bound to the surface group.

These buttons are disabled until at least one contact surface exists.

Corners (Counter-Clockwise)

Assigns the vehicle-fixed x, y, z coordinates (in inches) for the three corners — First, Middle and Third — of the contact surface. The fourth corner is assigned automatically by assuming a parallelogram. The corner coordinates are validated when the surface is saved; invalid (degenerate) coordinates are rejected.

Material Name

Displays the name of the material assigned to the current contact surface (read-only in this dialog; edit it in the Material Properties dialog). Newly added surfaces are assigned the "Default Vehicle Material".

Add

Adds a contact surface. A New Contact Surface dialog prompts for the surface name; the name must be non-empty and unique. The new surface is created with corner coordinates of 0,0,0 and the default vehicle material (linear stiffness 982.8 lb/in, friction 0.5, maximum force 1580 lb, maximum deflection 2.5 in, unloading slope 740 lb/in). No more than 25 surfaces may be added.

Delete Surface

Deletes the current contact surface (after a confirmation prompt).

Material...

Displays the Material Properties Dialog Box for the current contact surface.

OK / Cancel

OK validates the corner coordinates and saves the contact surfaces to the vehicle; Cancel discards the changes.

Source topic: ContSurfDlg.htm — updated from source code (HVEINV-64, Physics) 2026-07-05.

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