Normals (only Preprocessing)

Menu: View->Normals->Lines
Menu: View->Normals→Surfaces

With this command GiD draws the direction and sense of the normals of lines and surfaces.

• Normals -> Lines: draws the direction of the selected lines. If the line lies on the plane z=0, GiD also displays the normal of the line in 2D.
• Normals -> Surfaces: draws the normals of the selected surfaces. There are two ways of viewing surface normals:
  • Normal (as an arrow)
  • Colored (the front and back faces of the surface are colored differently, front with layer color and back faces in yellow).

Viewing commands (zoom, rotation, etc.) can be applied and the normals will remain on the screen.
To swap the normal sense of lines or surfaces see Swap normals (only Preprocessing).