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Old 24th November 2010, 09:15 AM   #1
Hans_Petter
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Default Imperfect mirroring

I'm in the process of creating a fuselage structure. Since there's lateral symmetry I can work on one side and mirror the result to obtain the other. Actually, I've sliced the model several times during the process, discarded the right side and replaced it with a mirrored version of the left side. In theory this should ensure perfect symmetry. It does....almost. I've found that some problem areas tend to get slightly messed up and I may get unwanted vertices / surfaces along the joining edges. Evidently, the slicing of a model will cause the creation of new vertices but I would expect them to match up perfectly. Recently I've decided to leave a slot between the two sides so that I can slice the model without cutting into any surfaces. When it's finished I'll join the edges by creating new surfaces to bridge that narrow gap.

To get rid of unwanted vertices I've tried the snap to distance feature. However, it may not work the way I think. What I want is to get rid of overlapping vertices--those defining surfaces that seem to be interconnected while they're really not. You'll know the moment you move a vertex and the surface slides away from the adjacent surface. I want all surfaces to become and stay interconnected. Is there any easy way to accomplish this? In other words, rather than snapping vertices to the exact same location I want to join or weld overlapping vertices.
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Old 24th November 2010, 04:29 PM   #2
luuckyy
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Default Re: Imperfect mirroring

Vertex / snap together by distance

Object / Optimize vertices

HTH.
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Old 25th November 2010, 06:23 PM   #3
Hans_Petter
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Default Re: Imperfect mirroring

Quote:
Originally Posted by luuckyy View Post
Vertex / snap together by distance

Object / Optimize vertices

HTH.
While "optimize vertices" may clean up some anomalies my problems may be due to starting out with a triangulated model. I see overlapping surfaces and vertices that are stacked on top of each other. Is there a simple way to revert to a totally inter-connected, single layer model with no overlapping surfaces?
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Old 28th November 2010, 10:23 AM   #4
luuckyy
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Default Re: Imperfect mirroring

If you have 2 identical surfaces on top of each other then "Optimize vertices" and "Optimize surfaces" should take care of that ... (by removing duplicated surfaces) ; now your problem is probably a bit more complex and I see no easy way other than a manual check to resolve the issue.
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Old 1st December 2010, 08:02 PM   #5
Hans_Petter
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Default Re: Imperfect mirroring

I seem to have found the solution. First I need to snap vertices together by distance. In my case it took a choice of 0.04 as "tolerance" to get most overlapping vertices in the exact same position. The thing to check before I proceed is whether any surfaces have been lost in the process. If it still looks OK I proceed to "optimize vertices" and then to "optimize surfaces". I got rid of more than 70 redundant vertices.

In retrospect, I should have cleaned up the model before I started working on it. It was an X-Plane model that I imported to add more detail. It looked basic but fine and I didn't notice all the overlapping surfaces / stacked vertices until I had reworked it extensively. Now, I do understand that most sims like triangulated models (even though I don't know why) but I fail to see why overlapping surfaces / redundant vertices in (next to) the same position help in any way.

In any event, "snap vertices together" at 0.04 before any optimizing did the trick.
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