Splitting and Cutting Polygons

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How To

Set up:

  1. Make sure you are in the PEP editor.

  2. Select polygons that you want to split or cut.

To split a polygon using pre-defined operations:

  1. Press the appropriate button from the Split palette:


  2. Now you can select and edit the new faces.

To split a polygon by dragging the cutting tool:

  1. Press this button:

  2. Drag from one side of a polygon to another to split the polygon along a new edge.

To cut a rectangle out of a polygon:

  1. Press this button:

  2. Drag out a rectangle. When you end the drag, the original polygon is split into several polygons.

See Chipping-Off Polygons for an example of using this tool to create a door in a house.

Try It: Creating a Roof for a House

The basic shape for a house is fairly simple.

  1. Start out with a cube in the PEP editor.

  2. Select the top polygon and press to split the top polygon lengthwise.



  3. Select the edge in the middle of the split polygon and Shift-drag along a side polygon to push the edge up and form the roof:

Try It: Creating a Dormer for a House

You can model interesting shapes from a simple PEP object like a square by using a combination of split and cut operations, then moving and extruding the new polygons. For example, suppose you want to create a dormer for a house that looks like this:

The combination of split buttons you would use follows:

  1. Starting with the basic house shape in Example 1, select a side of the roof and press to split the polygon lengthwise:




  2. Select the lower half of the roof and press to split the polygon vertically:



  3. Keeping the same selection from step 2 (don't select anything new), press to split the quads like this:



  4. To make the angles for the dormer roof, select the appropriate quad and press or :



Now you have the basic shape for the dormer. To pull out the dormer, you'd select the polygons that make up the dormer, press the Extrude Polygons button, and move the polygons out so the front of the dormer is flush with the front of the house. See Extruding Polygons and Edges and Aligning PEPs for more information on these topics.

To complete the tutorial, see Creating a House.

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