Assembling Surface Meshes

To assemble surface meshes

1. Select all the surfaces.

2. Choose Create Surf Mesh Assemble from the Model toolbar. The Assemble NurbsMesh (SCM) dialog box opens.

3. Set the following parameters:

   • Specify a positional tolerance for matching boundary points. Any boundary points that are farther apart than this tolerance value will not be joined and the entire boundary will be excluded from continuity management.

     If the tolerance is too big, too many points will be stitched together and you will not get the desired results.

   • You also have the option of keeping local materials and any clusters you have defined on the surfaces. In addition you can choose whether the center of the new surface mesh is created at its geometric center or at the global scene center.

4. Click OK.

   A surface mesh is created and an SCM Fixer Op2 applies automatically. Any tagged points are added to a special cluster named NonFixingPointsCluster.

   The original surfaces remain, but there is no modeling relation between them and the surface mesh.

5. Set the following options:

   • Always Evaluate toggles the continuity manager on and off. You can switch this off for faster performance while you work, then switch it back on again before you render.

   • Continuity determines the continuity across every junction managed by the SCM Fixer Op: C0 (or positional continuity; that is, no holes but not necessarily smooth) or C1 (or tangential continuity; that is, smooth).

   • Don't Fix the Tagged Points controls whether points in the NonFixingPointsCluster are excluded from continuity management and create a hole. See Excluding Points from Continuity Management.

   • Allow Modification of Boundary Points determines whether you can manipulate boundary points directly by moving them. For more information, see Moving Boundary Points.

   To display these options again later, select the assembled surface mesh, then choose the Selection button on the Select panel and click the SCM Fixer Op2 icon.