Chipping-off and Forming New Polygons

on this page: how to | example 1 | example 2

How To

Set up:

  1. Make sure you are in the PEP editor.

  2. Select polygons that you want to delete.
To chip a polygon off a PEP object: press
Now you can pull away and reposition the face.
To form a new polygon from selected edges: press
A new polygon forms over the selected edges.

You can also extract polygons into new PEP objects. For details, jump to: Merging, Combining, and Joining Polygons.

Example 1: Use Chip Off Polygon to Create a Door

Suppose you want to create a door for a house. First, you'd use the cut rectangle tool to define a new polygon for the door:

But if you try to select and move this polygon, it will pull out the points that define the front of the house. To move just the polygon that defines the door, select it and click the chip off polygon button:

The result will be a polygon you can move independent from the rest of the house. Next, you probably want to rotate the edge of the door like a hinge:

For this you'd use the PEP Jack, a tool for rotating and scaling points and edges.

Example 2: Use Form New Polygon From Selected Edges With the Draw Tool

The Form New Polygon From Selected Edges is very useful when you use the draw tool to create unique shapes.

Suppose you want to make a star shape to use in your scene.

  1. Click on the Create palette and click-drag to create a star shape. Jump to: Drawing a Face for more information.

  2. Select the shape and enter the PEP editor by clicking .

  3. Click Extrude Polygons and Ctrl-drag to pull the selected polygons up. Now you have a nice extrusion, but the bottom cap is missing (reposition your view so you can see the bottom):



  4. Sweep select the bottom edges:



  5. Click to form a new polygon over the selected edges:

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