Simplify Faces Feature

The Simplify Faces feature helps to repair and simplify meshes by merging multiple coplanar polygons together.

In the example above, from left to right:

• Two primitives (a cube and sphere) are overlapping.
• When the sphere is used to Boolean Cut a portion out of the cube, the cube gains many polygons.
• The Simplify Faces feature helps reduce the number of polygons.

Use

This feature can be used to…

• Merge coplanar or contiguous polygons together into one larger simplified polygon.

• Simplify a mesh that has too many vertices.

Simplify Faces Feature Properties

Property	Options
Name	Name the feature. Unique names for each feature is not required, but useful in managing a longer feature stack.
Select Faces	Opens the Face Selection Pane to define the collection of faces to be merged.

Selecting Faces

Creating the feature, or returning to the feature and clicking the Select Faces button, starts a special scene mode where you can select specific faces of the active mesh. While in this mode...

• 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.

• Note that the options in the toolbar that can help you with face selection are active by default. In most situations, you'll find face selection much easier with these options turned on.

• All the faces of the selected mesh appear. Those highlighted in color are selected and will be simplified.

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

• Orbit about the selected mesh with a mouse drag.

• Select faceswith Shift-Drag. The selected vertices will highlight red.

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

• Deselect faces from your selection with Shift-Alt-Drag. They will return to a clear outline.

• Save your collection of faces by clicking Done. The toolbar disappears, and face selection mode ends. You'll see the number of polygons drop as the faces are simplified.

• Edit a collection of faces by clicking the Select Faces button again to return to this mode.

Viewing your results

The selected faces are not merged together until the feature is closed. You can close a feature by clicking the chevron in the header of the feature, or by opening another feature. In this way, you can easily see “before and after” the merge by opening and closing the merge faces feature in the stack.

Tips

• Various rendering modes (such as wireframe mode) can help you understand the mesh better and select the faces more accurately. Learn more about rendering modes shown in the scene toolbar.
• After simplification, you may note some adjustments are needed. The Weld Vertices and Subdivide features can be useful tools.
• Compare with the Weld Vertices feature, which helps merge together just a few vertices.
  

Simplify Faces is a destructive feature, and can adversely affect any subsequent features on this mesh. In most cases, this feature is not adjusted during run-time with Snap rules. It is often collapsed permanently. For a technical description of destructive features, see the technical notes on the “Delete Faces” documentation.