Dicing Polygons

Dicing subdivides polygons by adding edges at regular intervals along one or more perpendicular planes.

To dice polygons

Do one of the following:
- To dice an entire object, select the object.
  
  or
- To dice specific polygons or polygon clusters on the object, select them first.
Choose Modify Poly. Mesh Dice Polygons from the Model toolbar.

The polygons are diced and the Dice Polygons Op property editor opens.

Dice Options

Specifying the Cutting Planes

The cutting planes used for dicing are specified by a combination of the Style, Frame, and Merge parameters in the Dice Polygons Op property editor.

Style selects the axes to cut along. The result is a crisscross pattern across the Z = 0 plane (XY), X = 0 plane (YZ), Y = 0 plane (XZ), or all planes (XYZ).

Frame determines which set of axes to use:

Global uses the scene origin as reference.
Local Object uses the object's own center as reference.
Local Component uses the local reference frame of the affected polygons. The local reference frame can be based on each individual polygon, each group of adjacent polygons, or all selected polygons, depending the Merge parameter. Local Component has no effect if you diced an object instead of components.

Merge determines how the components are diced:

None dices each polygon separately.
Adjacent Polygons performs one dice operation on each group of connected polygons.
All performs a single dice operation on all polygons together, whether or not they are connected.


Two groups of adjacent polygons are selected.	Merge = None Each polygon is diced individually. In this example, there are 3 slices in both X and Z, and Frame is set to Local Component.

Merge = Adjacent Connected polygons are diced as one piece by a 3x3 pattern. Disconnected polygons are diced separately.	Merge = All All polygons are diced together as one piece by a 3x3 pattern. Notice that one of the vertical slices misses the selected polygons.

Specifying the Number of Slices

You can specify the number of slices directly using the X, Y, and Z sliders, or specify a uniform grid:

To set the number of slices directly, set Number of Slices X, Y, and Z to the desired number in each direction. The slices are spaced so that they evenly divide the bounding box with respect to the reference set by the Frame parameter.
To use a uniform grid for slicing, activate Grid Like and set the desired Grid Size. Softimage automatically calculates the required number of slices in each direction.

Removing Small Edges and Polygons

Dicing sometimes creates very small edges and polygons when a slice passes close to an existing vertex. You can eliminate these small components using Point Snap Tolerance — if a new point created by the dice operator is closer to an existing point than the tolerance value, the new point gets snapped to the existing point and welded. As a result, some of the new edges are no longer exactly parallel to the cutting plane, but no existing points get moved.

Disconnecting Edges

To break the object apart into separate, disconnected polygons and islands of polygons along the new edges, activate Disconnect Edges. The dice operator creates pairs of boundary edges instead of simple edges. The effect is the same as if you selected all new edges created by the dice operation and then chose Modify Poly. Mesh Disconnect Edges.

Selecting Edge Loops

To select all edges or boundaries created by the dice operator, click Select Edge Loops.