Merge Points

(default keyboard shortcut M)

Use the Merge Points command (Detail > Points > Merge Points) to remove points that occupy the same or very nearly the same space. Remember, if all of the points along a polygon’s edge are shared, LightWave’s surface smoothing can smooth over the two polygons.

Many circumstances exist where you may create unnecessary duplicate points, but here is a list of some common ones:

1. After you cut polygons to a separate layer and then paste them back.
2. After you use Boolean and Drill operations (including Fracture ), because the complex mathematics involved often generate extra points.

  Left: Before merging we can see the smooth ball has facets, one side of the subpatched cube is flat and there’s a seam down the middle of the bust. Merging points cures all these ills.

If the Keep 1-Point Polygons option is disabled, polygons are automatically deleted if they become single points (due to their vertices merging together). The default is for these polygons to be retained.The Merge Points command has two Range modes: Automatic and Fixed. These basically determine the criteria for when points should be considered mergeable.

Automatic merges the points that share the same space. For objects or portions of objects that you have cut from the main object with the intention of merging later (back into their original positions), use Automatic.

Fixed merges any points within the specified Distance of one another. When merged, one point will move to the location of another - Merge will not average the distance between points to create a new point midway between them. As such, the related polygon may be stretched as necessary.