Move Vertices Feature

Move Vertices can stretch and twist a portion of your mesh while leaving the rest untouched.

Use

Usually, you want to change the position or rotation for the entire mesh all at once. You don’t want to distort its shape by moving one vertex more than another. But in some cases, you may want to distort a mesh by moving some of those vertices separately from the rest of the mesh. You can do this using the “Move Vertices” feature of a mesh. Once you define a group of vertices, you can move just that part of the mesh, without altering the rest.

Vertex Group Feature Properties

Imagine a metal bolt that comes in different lengths. As your customer makes the bolt longer or shorter, you do not want the head of the bolt to get thicker or thinner, as shown in the top row. You want the increased length to be applied only the the bolt shaft, as shown in the bottom row.

Consider a window configurator, as shown on the left in the image below. If the customer can change the overall width and height of the window, we don’t want the window frame to be thicker or thinner (as shown in the top right). We want the frame to be constant, and only the dimensions of the glass to change (as shown in the bottom right).

In summary, if one of the components of your configured product is Engineer-To-Order, or that component has many variations which are only differences in part of the overall shape, then vertex groups can greatly simplify your scene. Instead of having 50 metal screw meshes in your scene, all slightly different from each other, simply have one screw mesh, and distort it as necessary with a vertex group.

This is one of 3 ways to change the scale of a mesh.

• To change the size of the entire mesh, change the scale property of the mesh itself. No feature is required.

• To change the size of specific dimensions of the mesh (say, to make it taller on the Y axis, or thicker on the X axis), use the Transform Geometry feature.

• To change the size of specific dimensions of the mesh, while keeping portions of the mesh unchanged (say, to make a picture frame wider while keeping the frame thickness), use this Move Vertices feature.

Property	Options
Name	Name the feature. Unique names for each feature is not required, but useful in managing a longer feature stack.
Translation	Move the vertex group in space.
Rotation Axis/ Rotation Angle	Rotate the group, using the axis/angle method of rotation.
Scale	Grow or shrink the vertex group larger or smaller.
Transform Center	Specify the center of these transformations: the fixed pivot point for the entire mesh (set in the Mesh Properties tab), or the flexible barycenter. A barycenter is the dynamic center of a group of vertices as they move.
Edit Vertices	Opens the Vertex Selection Pane to define the collection of vertices to be merged.

Creating the feature, or returning to the feature and clicking the Edit Vertices button, starts a special scene mode. Called "Vertex Selection Mode", this mode helps you to select specific vertices of the active mesh. While in this mode...

Editing Vertices

• A new toolbar appears across the top of the scene as a reminder. You will stay in this mode until you click the Done button in that bar.

• Other scene operations (like transforming or scaling the mesh) are not available until you exit this mode by clicking Done.

• All the vertices of the selected mesh now appear as small particles, or dots, to help you make your selection. Blue dots are not selected, yellow dots are selected. You can change the size of the blue and yellow particles by dragging the "Particle Size" slider.

• Orbit about the selected mesh with a mouse drag.

• Select vertices by dragging a box around them with Shift-Drag. The selected vertices will highlight yellow.

• Add more vertices to your selection with Shift-Control-Drag.

• Deselect vertices from your selection with Shift-Alt-Drag. They will return to a blue color.

• Save your collection of vertices by clicking Done. The toolbar disappears, and vertex selection mode ends.

• Edit a collection of vertices by clicking the Edit Vertices button again to return to this mode.

Defining a vertex group in the 3D scene

Select the mesh, and open its feature stack.

1. Click New Feature, and select the "Move Vertices" feature.

2. Give the feature a name, such as “Top of column” or “Left side of window”. You’ll use this name later in your Snap rules.

3. Click Edit Vertices in the feature, and use the options above to create the vertex group.

4. Click Done to exit vertex selection mode.

5. Test your selection by editing the translation dimensions in the move vertices feature. You’ll see that vertex group move, and the rest of the mesh remain unchanged. Restore the dimensions back to zero

6. If the vertex group contains the wrong vertices, repeat steps 3-4.

Using the Move Vertices Feature Manually

Once the vertex group has been defined, it can be adjusted in a number of ways. Use the properties listed in the feature to…

• Translate (Move) the group.

• Rotate the group,

• Scale the group.

Using the Move Vertices Feature in a Scene Rule

Any vertex group that was defined during design-time is available for Snap code to manipulate during run-time. Move, rotate, or scale the group based on logic. Use the “Set feature” block to accomplish this. In this Snap block, first select the node that the feature belongs to, then the name of the feature, and finally what property should be changed.

Tips for using this feature

Some things to remember about vertex groups you create with this feature:

• One mesh can have no, one, or many “Move Vertex” features. Create as many as you need.

• You create and maintain the collection of points here, in this 3D scene feature. While you can manipulate the entire group of points using Snap, you cannot add or remove points from the group in Snap. Instead, just define multiple “Move Vertex” features, and use the ones you want.

• Any single vertex in the mesh can belong to no, one, or many “Move Vertex” features. For example, consider the picture frame above. The points defining the lower-right corner of the frame are members of the “right side” vertex group, as well as the “bottom side” vertex group. In this way, they move horizontally as your user wants a wider window, and then move vertically when your user wants a taller window.