connecting vertices

[Marcel]

I think the welding doesn't work because the vertices are already part of a polygon at the place you want to weld them. It's hard to see, because I can't see the hidden edges. If you go into edge mode and select all edges you can see a bit more of the polygons. Delete the polygons you don't need and try if welding works afterwards...

I normally work with 'vertex snap' on, that makes it easy for me to move vertices exactly onto eachother (disable the transform gizmo temporarely if it interferes with the snapping).
After moving the vertices with the 3d snap on the welding should give you more trouble.

[glorious100]

Thx for the reply Marcel,
Like you sayed, I have to delete some polygons before the welding will work. But I must delete to much. :sad:
The model is something like a hole surrounded with planes, but the hole have to be closed (for a window). Isn't this possible in 1 piece or do I have to make it out of more?

[Arxangel]

sometimes I found myself accidentaly doing this, having selected to meshes and then going into editable mesh and trying to weld or collapse points, you can tell if the word Editable mesh is Italisized.

Arxangel

[Marcel]

Thx for the reply Marcel,
Like you sayed, I have to delete some polygons before the welding will work. But I must delete to much.

If you go into edge mode, and use the 'select all' function you can see the hidden edges (dotted lines). You can turn these edges, and make them visible or invisible.
If you delete a polygon (=more faces) then it'll delete every face that is connected by a invisible edge. If you delete a face then it'll delete only one face at a time.

So if you say that you 'have to delete too much', then you are probably in polygon mode. In face mode the deleting should be easier. Try turning edges until you can delete what you want....

[glorious100]

Hi Marcel,

What do you excactly mean by "turning the edges"?
I have made the hidden edges visible in the display properties of the model by unticking the option 'edges only'. But I don't think I'm in face mode now. How do I do that? And how do you see that a face is selected and not a polygon?

[sam]

in order to Weld Target two vertices together make sure they are connected by an edge. If they are not connected by an edge, create an edge between them. Then you can use Weld Target to weld two vertices together.

I have both of these operations hotkeyed so its a quick two key operation for me.

If for some reason you cannot create an edge between the two vertices you have something wrong going on with your topology (such as having multiple polygons complexly overlapping each other where you think you have a simpler surface). If that is the case clean up your surface topology first.

[Marcel]

Hi Marcel,

What do you excactly mean by "turning the edges"?

It's kinda hard to explain, this is what the helpfile says. Try activating the 'turn' button and click on some edges, you'll see soon enough what it does....

Turn—Rotates the edge within its bounding. All mesh objects in 3ds max are composed of triangular faces, but by default, most polygons are depicted as quadrilaterals, with a hidden edge dividing each quad into two triangles. Turn lets you change the direction in which the hidden edge (or any other) runs, thus affecting how the shape changes when you transform sub-objects directly, or indirectly with a modifier.

I have made the hidden edges visible in the display properties of the model by unticking the option 'edges only'. But I don't think I'm in face mode now. How do I do that? And how do you see that a face is selected and not a polygon?

That way you make all hidden edges visible. If you want to make a selected edge visible you have to press the 'visible' button (under editable mesh->surface properties)
The face mode is the mode you enter when you press the button with the triangle, the polygon mode is the button with the square (alternatively you can also press on the + in front to make the different sub-object modes visible, and select them there)

[glorious100]

I've think this is one of max limitations. Here is a simple example what I try to do. After extrusion I want the hole be back closed again and the 'closingplate' must be connected to the original plane (hope this is understandable). Is this possible with max?

http://users.pandora.be/glorious/images/Vraag%20vertices%202.jpg

[Marcel]

Nope, that is indeed not possible. Then one edge would be shared by 3 faces, which is not something Max can do. You could ofcourse just put the closing face there and not weld it (but then the surface won't smooth nicely)

[Stroker]

If I'm understanding your lastest question, just Create Poly and click it in real quick. I think...

As far as welding/collapsing those verts in your original question, it does sound like overlapping faces or something equally nasty. I usually ferret these out by using STL-Check and changing the option for telling what STL-Check should check for. Switching to Wireframe mode can help with this as well.

If I can't tell what's going on with STL-Check, I resort to clicking polys/lines that are suspect and deleting them - suspect because of funky behavior when I try to select a particular poly/line. Kinda hard to explain. Sometimes I'll have to rebuild a face or two, but I don't mind.

Sometimes, for me, it's two overlapping verts. So I'll select what I think is one vert, then Collapse them.

If that still doesn't work, then I'll go kick the neighbor's dog.

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