More Can't Close Faces

Jim57

I'm modeling both furniture and a large architectural space. The building saves to about 600KB and the furniture ranges from 300KB to 1.2MB.

I am often unable to close a face. It seems simple enough— either it's not a plane or there's an open corner. I trace over it— no go. I put it in Styles/Color By Axis: the lines are parallel. I draw diagonals and it closes— maybe only on three sides. I trace everything again, and again, and again. I erase the duplicates and start over, with similar results. Finally it closes (perhaps a half hour later). I erase one of the diagonals— the OPPOSITE (unaffected) triangle disappears. Sometimes I connect the ends of two straight lines showing parallel to axis, and the quadrilateral does not close, even when repeatedly traced. When I Push/Pull a face and get a line, it is difficult to reestablish the face if I erase the (unneeded) line.

What I AM doing:
—locking inferences for parallel
—drawing parallel to axis, confirmed by Styles/Color By Axis
—letting SU to tell me I've snapped to an end point
—testing diagonals for intersection @ center
—tracing over outlines, zooming in to be sure there are no erroneous points near the corners
—orbiting to test for obvious errors
—paying attention to the details

I wonder, is this a SU problem? When lines show alignment with axes, or when ends show the snap dot, is SU sometimes wrong?

Is this a computer thing? I'm working on a MacBook Pro, which gets hot when I work long sessions. I have more problems when I am a ways into the session, and they fewer when I'm starting fresh for the day.

Thanks for the feedback,

JIm

mitcorb

You may need to zoom way in close almost to clipping and analyze the lines near vertices. Sometimes for whatever reason, faces don't close.

Also, sometimes depending on the contortions you used, you may have some very tiny triangles with open faces. Select all three sides, right click on any side, and in the context menu look for "repair tiny triangles" or similar wording.
If this does not appear, then go to Tools, Utilities, Make Face.

Of course, I may have missed the nature of your problem. If there is difficulty selecting, you may have to scale the model up say 10 times, so that camera clipping won't be as much of an issue. Clipping as you may know is when you zoom so far in that the target disappears on the screen as if you zoomed right through the target.

Gaieus

Well, with furniture > curved faces on them > thus resulting very tiny "to-be" faces it may be the problem. SU has this OpenGL issue with closing faces with edges less than about 1/16" (or a millimetre). The solution (i.e. "workaround" is generally to scale the whole thing up, close the faces and then scale it back. This mostly occurs when some automated face generation is required (like with the Follow me tool or some intersection) so if you "by default" build your pieces of furniture at a bigger scale and only scale them down when ready to use, you can probably spare the "healing" process.

mitcorb

The downside to working at a larger scale is that you have to translate measured distances from the big scale to the small scale or vice versa during graphic input. I know-- life ain't fair.

Gaieus

This is when metric system comes in handy. If you generally workin millimetres (as I would imagine a furniture maker would), just set the template to centimetres and "input" what you really mean in millimetres. You are modelling 10 times bigger this way and when you import your component to a model with millimetres, everything will be recalculated.

There is a caveat though: texturing should always be done after you rescaled the model. Even then right click > "Scale definition" after rescaling and before texturing.

mitcorb

Oh, I know about millimeters, that's those little bitty pieces of inches. hee hee.

Gaieus

Yeah, exactly. The only problem with them is that when they invented them, they didn't divide inches properly.

Jean Lemire

Hi folks.

1 inch = 25.4 millimeters exactly.

I only memorise this number since I can derive all others easily.

Just ideas.

Jim57

Thanks for all your comments, they help a lot.

First, as expected, I can see some problems with my workflow. I was taking a floor plan into SU, then an elevation, and coordinating them. There were minor discrepancies— for instance, a wall 1/64" out of line. The snaps & inferences happened with different lines.

Second, while I'm currently working on a building, but I can see places in the furniture where small triangles did not close.

Third, the scale thing. I wasn't getting it before, but the bit about only closing in so far has been keeping me from getting close enough to see the problems.

On to the next: What's going on when Push/Pull will select a face, but will not move it? Or will only move it a certain amount, then refuse to budge? Or not move it until the mouse moves in just the right direction, after scribbling around trying to find any way that works?

Best,

JIm

PS: I'm in the States. What are millimeters?