8

1050 Chapter 9: Sur face Modeling
• Selectanevennumberofbordersontheobject,
and then click Bridge. This immediately creates
the bridge between each pair of selected borders
using the current Bridge settings, and then
deactivates the Bridge button.
• If no qualifying selection exists (that is, two
or more selected borders), clicking Bridge
activatesthebuttonandplacesyouinBridge
mode. First click a border edge and then move
the mouse; a rubber-band line connects the
mouse cursor to the clicked e dge. Click a
second edge on a different border to bridge the
two. This creates the bridge immediately using
the cu rrent Bridge settings; the Bridge button
remains active for connecting more pairs of
borders. To exit Bridge mode, right-click the
active viewport or click the Bridge button.
Note: Bridge always creates a str aight-line
connection between border pairs. To make
thebridgeconnectionfollowacontour,apply
modelingtoolsasappropriate
after creating the
bridge. For example, bridge two borders, and then
use
Bend (page 1–541) .
B ridge S ettings—Opens the Bridge dialog (page
1–1068)
,whichletsyouconnectpairsofborders
via interactive manipulation.
Connect—Creates new edges between pairs of
selected border edges. The edges are connected
from their midpoints.
You can connect only edges on the same polygon.
Connect will not let the new edges cross. Thus, for
example, if you select all four edges of a four-sided
polygon and then click Connect, only n eig hboring
edges are connected, resulting in a diamond
pattern.
Connect S ettings —Lets you preview the
Connectandspecifythenumberofedgesegments
created by the operation. To increase the mesh
resolution around the new edge, increase the
Connect Edge Seg ments setting.
Create S ha pe From S election—After selecting one
or more borders, click this button to create a spline
shape from the selected edges. A Create Shape
dialog appears, letting you name the shape and set
it to Smooth or Linear. The new shape’s pivot is
placed at the center of the poly object.
Weigh t—Sets the weig ht of selected borders. Used
by the
NURMS subdivision option .
Increasing an edge weight tends to push the
smoothed result away.
Cr e ase —Specifies how much creasing is performed
on the selected border or borders. U sed by the
NURMS subdivision option .
At low settings, the border is relatively smooth. At
higher settings, the crease becomes increasingly
visible. At 1.0, the hig hest setting, the border is
notsmoothedatall.
Edit Tri[angulation]—Lets you modify how
polygons are subdivided into tr iang les by dr awing
internal edges, or
diagonals (page 3–1022) .
To edit triangulation manually, turn on this
button. The hidden edges appear. Click a polygon
vertex. A rubber-band line appears, attached to
the cursor. Click a non-adjacent vertex to create a
new triangulation for the polygon.
Tip: For easier editing of triangulation, use the
Turn command instead (see following).
Tu rn—Lets you mo dify how polygons are
subdivided into triangles by clicking diagonals.
When you activate Turn, the
diagonals (page
3–1022)
become visible as dashed lines in
wireframeandedged-facesviews.InTurnmode,
click a diagonal to change its position. To exit Turn
mode, right-click in the viewport or click the Turn
button again.