User Manual

Tolerance
In auto mode, the Tolerance value is automatically detected. This should work in most cases.
It can also be adjusted manually if needed.
Usage
Use Weld 3D when issues occur with the geometry. Don’t use it everywhere just
because it’s there, as it influences render time.
Weld 3D is intended to be used as a mesh robustness tool and not as a mesh editing
tool to merge vertices. If you can see the gap between the vertices you want to weld in
the 3D view, you are probably misusing Weld 3D. Unexpected things may happen
when you do this; do so at your own peril.
Limitations
Setting the tolerance too large can cause edges/faces to collapse to points.
If your model has detail distributed over several orders of scale, picking a tolerance
value can be hard or impossible.
For example, suppose you have a model of the International Space Station and there
are lots of big polygons and lots of really tiny polygons. If you set the tolerance too
large, small polygons that shouldn’t merge do; if you set the tolerance too small, some
large polygons won’t be merged.
Vertices that are far from the origin can fail to merge correctly. This is because
bignumber + epsilon can exactly equal bignumber in float math. This is one reason it
may be best to merge in local coordinates and not in world coordinates.
Sometimes Weld 3D-ing a mesh can make things worse. Take Fusion’s cone, for
instance. The top vertex of the cone is currently duplicated for each adjoining face, and
they all have different normals. If you weld the cone, the top vertices merge and only
have one normal, making the lighting look weird.
Weld 3D is not multithreaded.
Warning
Do not misuse Weld 3D to simplify (reduce the polygon count of) meshes. It is designed
to efficiently weld vertices that differ by only very small values, like a 0.001 distance.
Common Controls
Settings Tab
The Settings tab in the Inspector is duplicated in other 3D nodes. These common controls are
described in detail at the end of this chapter in “The Common Controls” section.
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