8

1062 Chapter 9: Sur face Modeling
Cut —
Lets you create edges from one polygon to
anotherorwithinpolygons. Clickatthestart
point, move the mouse and click again, and
cont inue moving and clicking to create new
connected edges. Right-click once to exit the
current cut, whereupon you can start a new one,
or right-click again to exit Cut mode.
Cutting to a ver tex (top); cutting an edg e (center); cutting a
polygon (bottom). Cut is available at the objec t level and all
sub-object levels.
Note: You can use Cut with Turn for enhanced
productivity. For more information, see
this
procedure (p age 1–1035)
.
MSmoot h—Smoothes the s election using the
current settings. This command uses subdivision
functionality similar to that of the
MeshSmooth
modifier (page 1–714)
.
MSmoot h S etti ngs—Opens the MeshSmooth
Selection dialog (page 1–1076)
,whichletsyou
specify how smoothing affects editable polys.
Tessellate—Subdivides selected polygons based on
the
Tessellation settings (page 1–1078) .
Tessellation is useful for increasing loca l mesh
density while modeling. You can subdivide any
selection of polygons. Two tessellation methods
are available: Edge and Face.
Tessellate S ettings—Opens the Tessellate
Selection dialog (page 1–1078)
,whichletsyou
specify how smo othing affects editable polys.
Mak e Planar—Forces all selected polygons to
become coplanar. The plane’s normal is the
average surface normal of the selected polygons.
Tip: OneapplicationforMakePlanarismakinga
flat side on an object. Normally, you would use a
contiguous selection set. If the selec tion includes
polygons on various parts of the object, the
polygons are still made planar, but with distorting
effects on the rest of the geometry.
X/Y /Z—Makes the selected polygons planar and
aligns the plane with the corresponding plane
in the object’s local coordinate system. The
plane used is the one to which the button axis
is perpendicular, so, for example, clicking the X
button aligns the polygons with the loca l YZ a x is.
V iew Align—Aligns selected polygons to the plane
of the active viewport. In the case of orthographic
viewports, this is the s ame effect as aligning to the
construction grid when the home grid is active.
When alig ning to a Perspect ive viewport (or
Camera and Light views), t he polygons are
reoriented to be alig ned to a plane that is parallel
to the camera’s v iewing plane. (Perspective
viewports have invisible ca mera planes.) In these
cases, the selection of polygons is not translated
but only rotated.