Hi, very often I has to create end miters for different profiles, so will be great to have the possibility of extruding/revolving selected faces of elements, even if it breaks the associativity with the part mesh definition.
Guess that today PrePoMax lack of orphan mesh operations, these could be the first.
Is the reason you suggest doing it this way the lack of direct meshing options? Or better adjustability?
Lack of direct meshing operations. Sometimes is usefull even work at node dragging level, for fixing some bad element.
Another use case might be closing gaps of CAD or the definition of adhesives which are not involved in the CAD part.
There is the possibility to include boundary layer in the part itself maybe a negative sign would be enough for the implementation?
I am working on a sweep meshing upgrade that will enable compound part meshing, but I also like the idea of tools that work directly on the mesh.
Maybe for now, the Extrude/Sweep can be used, and then using an element set → Convert to part → Delete part, the required result can be achieved.
The ability to work at the mesh level, being able to work directly with the nodes (as Midas NFX does, for example), would be incredible.
For making mesh operations, guess that the less traumatic for the user would be:
Implement a way to select elements/faces/edges/nodes (individual or related to surfaces/nodes/edges…) without need to create new sets. Forcing the user to create a new set will be a pain, and also add useless items to the model tree.
Then, with for example some faces selected, the user could select the tool “extrude/revolve/move/symmetry…” and a simple warning message “the CAD part associativity will be broken and the mesh will be transformed to orphan” and once the user acept the message (maybe with a check, I´m adult, don´t show me again), then the new elements will be created and added to the part.
The new selecting capacity could be used also to add or remove items to the node/face/elements sets that had been created, or to create new ones directly. Today for complex selections, editing can be dangerous as is very easy to forget to have the shift key to add some elements, leading to loose all the selection very often.
Related to the orphan meshing treatment is the possibility to create new nodes (by coordinates, arrays…) and elements (simple unit element, by selecting nodes…) without associated geometry.
If the orphan elements has been created, then they can be scaled (today that feature exist), but also they need to be able to refined (mostly hexas/quads/line elements)
Sorry if I´m asking to much 
