8

954 Chapter 9: Surface Modeling
surface is broken into smaller patches, each with
its own vertices and edges.
Element—Select and edit an entire element.
An element has contiguous faces.
Tip: You can highlight selected patches in a shaded
displaybyturningonShadeSelectedFacesinthe
View por t Properties dialog. Rig ht-click over the
viewportnameandchooseConfigureinthemenu
to display the Viewport Properties dialog. You
can also use the default keyboard shortcut, F2,to
toggle this feature.
Named Selections group
These f unctions work with named sub-object
selection sets. To create a named sub-object
selection, make the selection, and then enter
anameintheNamedSelectionSetsfieldon
the toolbar. For more information, see
Named
Selection Sets (page 1–85)
.
Co py—Places a named sub-object selection into
thecopybuffer.Afterclickingthisbutton,choose
the named sub-object selection from the Copy
Named Selection dialog that appears.
Pas te—Pastes the named sub-object select ion f rom
the copy buffer.
YoucanuseCopyandPastetocopysub-object
selections be tween different objects.
Filter group
These two check boxes, available only at the Vertex
sub-object level, let you select and transform
vertices, vectors (handles on the ver tices), or both.
When a check box is tur ned off, you can’t select the
corresponding element ty pe. Thus, for example, if
youturnoffVertices,youcanmanipulatevectors
without accidentally moving a ver tex.
Tip: Foreasiereditingofvectorsonly,usethe
Handle sub-object level (page 1–965) .
You can’t turn off both check box es. When you
turn off either check box, the other one becomes
unavailable. At that point, you can manipulate the
element corresponding to the check bo x that’s on,
butyoucan’tturnitoff.
Vertices—When on, you can select and move
vertices.
Vectors—When on, you can select and move
vectors.
Lock Ha n dl es—Affects only Corner vertices. Locks
the tangent vectors together so that when you
move one, you move them all. Available only at the
Vertex sub-object level.
By Ver tex—When you click a vertex, any handles,
edges, or patches that use that vertex, depending
on the c urrent sub-object level, are selected.
Available only at the Handle, Edge, and Patch
sub-object levels.
This also works with Region Select.
Igno re Backfacing—When on, selection of
sub-objects selec ts only those sub-objects whose
normals are visible in the viewport. When off
(the default), select ion includes all sub-objects,
regardless of the direction of their normals. Use
this on a complex patch model where you want to
select only visible patches.
Note: ThestateoftheBackfaceCullsettinginthe
Display p anel does not affect sub-object select ion.
Thus, if Ignore Backfacing is off, you can still select
sub-objects, even if you can’t see them.
Shrink—Reduces the sub-object selection area
by deselecting the outermost sub-objects. If
the selection size can no longer be reduced, the
remaining sub-objects are deselected. Unavailable
at the Handle sub-object level.
Grow—Expands the selection area outward in all
available directions. Unavailable at the Handle
sub-object level.