Selection

From Netfabb Wiki

Basic Selection

For the repair module, there are several selection options. Depending on the chosen selection mode, either single triangles, all triangles of surfaces or all triangles of shells can be selected with a mouse click. With default settings, selected triangles are colored green on the outside and darker green on the inside, while unselected triangles are colored blue on the outside and red on the inside.

If the Ctrl key is held, triangles, surfaces or shells can be deselected or added to the selection with a mouse click. If both the Ctrl key and the left mouse button are held, all triangles, surfaces or shells crossed by the mouse cursor are either added to or removed from the selection, depending on whether you first click on a selected or on an unselected triangle. Holding the Shift key instead of Ctrl works similarly, but only for adding to the selection.

Alternatively to selecting with simple mouse clicks, single triangles, surfaces or shells can also be selected in the context menu without changing the selection mode. If you are selecting single triangles or even using one of the manual repair modes, you can select a whole shell by right-clicking on it and choosing "Select this Shell" in the context menu. The same goes for triangles and surfaces.

Selected Triangles

Selected Surface

Selected Shell

After activating the mode selection rectangle in the toolbar (only netfabb Studio Professional!), you can select all triangles within a frame by holding the left mouse button and dragging a rectangle. Triangles on the backside of the part are not selected. However, triangles in the background which are oriented to the viewer, will be selected. So, if you have other shells in the background or if your part has a complex shape, it is possible that triangles you do not see are selected as well.

Drag a rectangle with the mouse.

The resulting selection.

Additionally, there are three default selections available in the toolbar or in the part's context menu. They select either all triangles, toggle the selection, which means that selected triangles are deselected and deselected triangles are selected at the same time, or clear the selection, with all triangles becoming deselected.

Surface Selection Parameters

Surface selection limited by the visualization of edges (left) and the selection tolerance (right)

The selection of surfaces is closely related with the visualization settings for edges. netfabb will interpret adjacent triangles as one surface, if the angle of the edge separating them is below the specification (and therefore is not visualized if the triangle mesh is switched off).

Additionally, by setting the selection tolerance at the bottom of the Status register, you can define the maximum angle between triangles becoming part of a surface and the triangle you click on.

So, when surfaces are selected, there are two different calculations for every triangle in question. First, the angle of the triangle to adjacent triangles which belong to the surface. Second, the angle of the triangle to the triangle clicked on. Both can be the limiting factor for the surface.

The Shell List

With netfabb Studio Professional, you can obtain a list of all shells of the part, if you click on the Shells register in the tabsheet. The following attributes of the shell are listed: Number of Triangles, overall area of all triangles, outbox volume (a cuboid frame enclosing the shell), shell volume, watertightness, orientability and outbox dimensions. The volume of the shell can only be given, if the shell is watertight. With the horizontal scroll bar below, you can scroll to the right to see all attributes. Optionally you can enlarge the whole context area (by drag & drop on the edge of the context area) to give the shell list more room.

If you click on one of these attributes, the shells are sorted according to that value, first from the highest to the lowest value and with another click from the lowest to the highest. This gives you a well-arranged overview over your shells.

If the box auto-select is ticked and you click on one of the shells, it is selected. It is marked blue in the list and, just as normal selections, green in the screen. If you hold Ctrl, shells can be added to or removed from the selection, although selections conducted in the screen will always be cleared. If you hold Shift, all shells are selected which are listed between the last shell you clicked on before holding shift and the shell you select now.

If you perform any editing or repairing function, naturally, the attributes of your shell change and the information given in the shell list may be invalid. In that case, the shells in the list are colored red. To update the list, click on the Refresh button below.

So, with the shell list, you can sort your shells according to certain attributes and select them. For example, if you have a part with many tiny shells which you want to remove, you can sort them according to their area and then select them by clicking on the first and then clicking on the last you want to select, holding shift. That way, all tiny shells are selected at once and can be removed with the Delete key.

The Shells register in the tabsheet lists all shells of a part.	Here, the same shells are listed according to their number of triangles.
The four shells with the smallest area are selected.	The red colored text indicates that the part has been edited and the shell list is no longer up-to-date.

Additional Selection Options

Whenever you have selected triangles or surfaces you can expand or shrink the selection in the context menu or by pressing Plus or Minus. If you expand the selection, all unselected triangles adjacent to the current selection are added to the selection. If you shrink the selection, all selected triangles adjacent to unselected triangles are removed from the selection.

If a part has holes, all surrounding triangles can be selected by right-clicking on the edge of a hole and choosing Select surrounding triangles. Alternatively, if you click on Select Attached Triangle Only, only the triangle to which the edge belongs is selected. That way, it is much easier to select tiny triangles along open edges, which may be created while working on the triangle mesh.

In the Actions register, the button Select Shells with Negative Volume enables the user to select all inverted shells. This function is very useful to select and then invert or remove those shells. However, it is only reliable with closed and oriented shells.

With netfabb Studio Professional, it is possible to perform an advanced triangle selection. Choose the option in the context menu and use the dialog box to select or deselect triangles above or below (or both) a certain area, volume (of the shell) and edge length.

[edit] Tutorials

Selection

[edit] Tutorials

Views

Personal tools

Navigation

Search

Toolbox