Page 784 - Kitab3DsMax

Part VI: Advanced Modeling
the surface and are colored blue. Open edges also mark the borders where holes in the object are located.
Edges are welded to the surface using the Weld Selected or the Weld All buttons. There is also a Welding
button that opens a rollout with options for selecting and welding specific edges. Welded edges are dis-
played as white, and selected edges are red.
The opposite of welding edges and combining faces is to explode them apart. There are buttons for explod-
ing the selected face or exploding all faces together. The Face Flip button provides a way to switch the nor-
mal for the surface using the Face Flipping/Visibility rollout.
Applying modifiers to Body Objects
One of the benefits that Max has over CAD packages is its lengthy list of modifiers. These modifiers can
alter objects quickly without changing the parametric nature of the object, but not all modifiers preserve the
default object type.
Using Boolean operations with Body Objects
Within the Object Parameters rollout is a Pick Object button. Using this button, you can select other Body
Objects that are outside the current selection and then use the other buttons below the Pick Object button
to define how the two objects are combined. The options include the following:
l Attach: Combines the other object as an element to the selected object and welds it edges.
l Detach: Removes the selected subobject from the current object and saves it as its own Body
Object. Edges also are not welded.
l Merge: Combines the other object with the current selection, making one element.
l Project: Projects the curve of a single face onto the other object along the face’s normal, creating
new edges.
l 3-D Cut: Creates new edges on the current object by tracing the overlapping volume of the
picked object.
l View Cut: Cuts into the current Body Object using a projected profile from the picked object. If
the Cut Selected Only option is enabled, then the cut affects only the selected subobject.
Figure 28.3 shows a cube Body Object that has been cut using the 3-D Cut and View Cut methods. For the
3-D Cut option, the torus object was used and then moved to reveal the remaining circle where the torus
overlapped the cube. The View Cut option projected the edges from the cylinder onto the cube.

Using the Join Bodies and Body Cutter features
If two or more objects are selected, you can use the Join Bodies button found in the Body Objects subcate-
gory of the Create panel to convert the objects into Body Objects and combine them. Within the
Conversion Parameters rollout, you can select how the objects are combined. The options including weld
only the edges, weld into solid, weld edges to surfaces, do nothing, intersect + merge faces, and Boolean
union.

Note
The Join Bodies button doesn’t require that one of the objects is already a Body Object. n

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