2011

Table Of Contents
Faces are non-overlapping units thatalong with their edges and
verticesform the basic editable units of a mesh object. When you move,
rotate, and scale individual mesh faces, surrounding faces are stretched and
deformed in order to avoid introducing gaps. When gaps occur, you can often
close them by smoothing the object or refining individual faces.
About Mesh Facets
Mesh faces have underlying structures, known as facets. The density of the
facet grid corresponds to the smoothness of the mesh. As the smoothness
level is increased, the density of the underlying facet grid also increases. When
you want to confine detailed mesh editing to a smaller area, you can convert
facets to editable faces by using refinement.
Unlike faces, facets cannot be individually modified. However, you can make
them more visible by modifying the VSLIGHTINGQUALITY system variable.
About Mesh Modeling
You can work with mesh objects in the following ways:
Add smoothness. Increase or decrease smoothness levels to round the
overall shape of the model. The underlying density of the mesh facet grid
increases as the mesh object smoothness level increases
(MESHSMOOTHMORE, MESHSMOOTHLESS).
Refine the object to reset the baseline smoothness level. Refine a mesh
object to convert the underlying facet grid to editable faces. Refinement
612 | Chapter 23 Modify 3D Models