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Catheter Setup tab

The catheter setup wizard guides you through defining the geometry and characteristics of your catheter design. It is the first tab in VirtuCath and uses the full width of the window.

How the wizard is laid out​

A step rail runs down the left-hand side. It is a tree, and it is how you move around; click any entry to jump straight to it, in any order:

  • Design: Everything about the shaft as a whole: the catheter name and design mode, the section list and their lengths, and the pull-wire arrangement.
  • Construction: The layer stackup, one page per section. Your sections appear as children under this step, each labeled with its length and layer count (for example, "Proximal — 7.874 in · 4 layers"), so you can jump straight to the one you want.
  • Review & Build: A summary of the whole design, and the Build button.

A Core Profile step appears between Design and Construction when the design mode is Multi-Lumen Core; see Multi-Lumen Core.

A Marker Bands step appears after Construction when Include marker bands is ticked on the Design step; see Marker bands.

The Back / Next buttons at the bottom step through in order; on the last step Next becomes Build.

VirtuCath opens on a plain 6 Fr polymer tube. Enter your diameter first: the tube's walls, and every wire and layer you add afterwards, are sized from it until you edit them (see the Design step). For a complete device to start from, open one of the example designs.

  • Example designs: the six shipped designs, from a 017 braided microcatheter to an 18 Fr braided introducer sheath.
  • Multi-Lumen Core: build on a shaped multi-lumen extruded core instead of a round bore.
  • Marker bands: radiopaque bands on the distal end, and the step that places them.
  • Drawing: a dimensioned manufacturing drawing of the built design.
  • Materials Library: polymer and metal materials available for layer assignment.
  • Catheter Analysis: review predicted stiffness and failure-mode KPIs after building.
  • Steering Simulation: run and drive the simulation after the model is built.
  • Reflow Calculator: back-out layer-stackup tolerances for procurement.
  • CLI API reference: the catheter .json schema, documented dynamically via the CLI's export_schema command.