1.7.5. Face Tools¶
Reference
These are tools that manipulate faces.
1.7.5.1. Make Edge/Face¶
Reference
This will create an edge or some faces, depending on your selection. Also see Creating Geometry.
Figure 1: A closed perimeter of edges.¶ |
Figure 2: Filled using fill.¶ |
1.7.5.2. Fill¶
Reference
The Fill option will create triangular faces from any group of selected edges or vertices, as long as they form one or more complete perimeters.
Figure 3: Filled using fill.¶
Note, unlike creating n-gons, fill supports holes.
Figure 4: A closed perimeter of edges with holes.¶ |
Figure 5: Filled using fill.¶ |
1.7.5.2.1. Beauty Fill¶
Reference
Beautify Fill works only on selected existing faces. It rearrange selected triangles to obtain more “balanced” ones (i.e. less long thin triangles).
- Max Angle
An angle delimiter option to limit edge rotation to flat surfaces.
Figure 6: Text converted to a mesh.¶ |
Figure 7: Result of Beauty Fill, Alt-Shift-F.¶ |
1.7.5.3. Solidify¶
Reference
This takes a selection of faces and solidifies them by extruding them uniformly to give volume to a non-manifold surface. This is also available as a Modifier. After using the tool, you can set the offset distance in the Operator Panel.
- Thickness
Amount to offset the newly created surface. Positive values offset the surface inward relative to the normals direction. Negative values offset outward.
Figure 10: Mesh before solidify operation.¶ |
Figure 11: Solidify with a positive thickness.¶ |
Figure 12: Solidify with a negative thickness.¶ |
1.7.5.4. Intersect¶
1.7.5.4.1. Intersect (Knife)¶
Reference
The Intersect tool lets you cut intersections into geometry. It is a bit like Boolean Tool, but, does not calculate interior/exterior. Faces are split along the intersections, leaving new edges selected.
- Source
- Selected/Unselected
Operate between the selected and unselected geometry.
- Self Intersect
Operate on the overlapping geometry of the mesh.
- Separate
Splits the geometry at the new edge.
- Merge Threshold
See Intersect (Boolean)
1.7.5.4.2. Intersect (Boolean)¶
Reference
Performs boolean operations with the selection on the unselected geometry. While the /modeling/modifiers/generate/booleans is useful for non-destructive edits, access to booleans as an edit-mode tool can be useful to quickly perform edits.
- Boolean
Difference, Union, Intersect
- Swap
Changes the order of the operation.
- Merge Threshold
Tolerance for close faces to be considered touching, It may be useful to increase this when some intersections aren’t detected that should be and when extra geometry is being created because edges aren’t detected as overlapping.
Warning
A threshold approaching size of faces may cause very slow calculation, in general keep this value small.
1.7.5.5. Wireframe¶
Reference
The wireframe tool makes a wireframe from faces by to turning edges into wireframe tubes, similar to the /modeling/modifiers/generate/wireframe.
1.7.5.6. Poke Faces¶
Reference
This tool fan-fills each face around a central vertex. This can be useful as a way to triangulate n-gons, or the Offset can be used to make spikes or depressions.
- Poke Center
Weighted Mean, Mean, Bounds
1.7.5.7. Triangulate Faces¶
Reference
As its name intimates, this tool converts each selected quadrangle into two triangles. Remember that quads are just a set of two triangles.
1.7.5.8. Triangles to Quads¶
Reference
This tool converts the selected triangles into quads by taking adjacent tris and removes the shared edge to create a quad, based on a threshold. This tool can be performed on a selection of multiple triangles.
This same action can be done on a selection of two tris, by selecting them and using the shortcut F, to create a face, or by selecting the shared edge and dissolving it with the shortcut X .
To create a quad, this tool needs at least two adjacent triangles. If you have an even number of selected triangles, it is also possible not to obtain only quads. In fact, this tool tries to create “squarishest” quads as possible from the given triangles, which means some triangles could remain.
Figure 13: Before converting tris to quads.¶ |
Figure 14: After converting tris to quads.¶ |
All the menu entries and hotkey use the settings defined in the Mesh Tools panel:
- Max Angle
This values, between (0 to 180), controls the threshold for this tool to work on adjacent triangles. With a threshold of 0.0, it will only join adjacent triangles that form a perfect rectangle (i.e. right-angled triangles sharing their hypotenuses). Larger values are required for triangles with a shared edge that is small, relative to the size of the other edges of the triangles.
- Compare UVs
When enabled, it will prevent union of triangles that are not also adjacent in the active UV map.
- Compare Vertex Color
When enabled, it will prevent union of triangles that have no matching vertex color.
- Compare Sharp
When enabled, it will prevent union of triangles that share a edge marked as sharp.
- Compare Materials
When enabled, it will prevent union of triangles that do not have the same material assigned.
1.7.5.9. Weld Edges into Faces¶
Reference
A Tool to split selected faces by loose wire edges. This can be used in a similar way to the knife tool, but the edges are manually setup first.
