Convert unordered faces to mesh

Convert a surface consisting of unordered 3dface entities into a 3d mesh. This method is only available for AutoCAD versions 2010 or higher.

Access methods

8 Toolbar:

8 Menu: ComputationalCAD † Convert faces to mesh

7 Command entry: CC:FACES:TOMESH

Dialog

Select faces:
Select the 3dfaces defining the surface.

Delete original faces [Yes/No]:
Select if the original faces shall be deleted. Default is <Yes>.

Summary

A mesh is an advanced data structure that has several advantages over unordered faces:

1.  The visualization performance for a mesh is several magnitudes better than for unordered faces. A mesh easily allows orbiting millions of faces with full shading in real time.

2.  Bitmap textures can be applied on a mesh in a whole allowing to produce high quality renderings e.g. of landscapes.

3.  A mesh can be smoothed.

4.  A mesh is stored with app. 25% less disk space than unordered triangular faces.

A mesh can simply be exploded into its underlying faces again. The command combines unordered AutoCAD 3d faces with identical layer and color properties to an AutoCAD mesh. Consequently, the command creates as much meshes as there are faces with different layer and color properties.

Example

Figure 23: Two meshes generated from 107k faces

Command line prompt:

Mesh    0:

 Layer name        : water

 Number of vertices: 23605

 Number of faces   : 45457

Mesh    1:

 Layer name        : ground

 Number of vertices: 32139

 Number of faces   : 62255