MEL How-To #36

How can I ensure that a polygon face component is planar?

1. When creating polygons, enable the ‘Polygons -> Tool Options -> Keep New Faces Planar’ menu option.

2. Create triangles, or Triangulate quads and n−gons. Triangles are planar by definition.

But of course you knew that. Here's what you were really looking for:

To "generate" planar faces from existing geometry, select one or more faces and execute the following:

global proc planarizeFacets()
{
  string $facets[] = `filterExpand -sm 34`;

  if ( size( $facets ) )
  {
    polyMoveFacet -localScaleZ 0.0 $facets;
  }
}

NOTE: This will not guarantee that all faces are planar! Planarizing one face will drag with it the vertices shared by adjacent faces, likely making them non-planar. Planarizing the adjacent face(s) will again drag these vertices, likely making the original face non-planar. It's a vicious circle.

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Tuesday, December 05, 2000