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Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Integrated BIM tools, including Revit, AutoCAD, and Civil 3D
Professional CAD/CAM tools built on Inventor and AutoCAD
Learn to use basic modifiers on objects.
Type:
Tutorial
Length:
6 min.
Tutorial resources
These downloadable resources will be used to complete this tutorial:
Transcript
00:04
But once you've got the primitive added to your scene,
00:06
let's go ahead and add a quick box here.
00:09
Once you've got that primitive, you can go to modify again.
00:12
Like I said, you can change the length, width and height,
00:14
you can change the segments.
00:16
But really, that's all you can do.
00:18
We can't do any sort of modeling on this. We can't use our uh poly modelling tools.
00:22
We can't even move the sub objects.
00:25
So what we wanna do is convert this to a state
00:27
where we can start to do some modeling on it.
00:29
And there are really two main states that we can convert this to a mesh or a poly.
00:34
If we right click on this object and we come down to convert to.
00:38
You can see
00:39
there's editable mesh and editable poly.
00:42
In order to take advantage of a lot of the poly modelling tools in three Ds Macs.
00:46
Normally you'll want to convert this to an editable poly rather than an edible mesh.
00:51
So we'll go ahead and say convert to edible polly as we do this,
00:53
watch the modify panel where it says box,
00:56
you can see now it says editable polly.
00:58
And there's also a little indicator letting us
00:60
know that there's something underneath this hierarchy.
01:03
If we click on this little arrow, you can see now the subj
01:06
objects in this polygon.
01:07
Let's talk for a moment about what the subj objects of a polygon are.
01:11
So the first subj object is going to be a vertex
01:13
and a vertex is simply a point in 3d space.
01:17
So an X value A Y value and a Z value in 3d space, it really doesn't have a size or mass.
01:24
We can see a little bit of an indicator of
01:25
where it is just so we're able to manipulate it,
01:27
but it's really just three numbers in space.
01:30
Now, an edge
01:31
is basically a completely straight line
01:34
that connects
01:35
two points or two vertices, vertices is gonna be the plural of vertex,
01:40
two of those vertices connected by an edge.
01:43
Again, the edge doesn't really have a, a mass or a size to it.
01:47
It's really just a line between two points in space.
01:49
It's always going to be straight.
01:51
The third subj
01:52
object that I wanna talk about is the one that we're actually going to see
01:55
and that's a polygon or sometimes you'll see it referred to as a face.
01:58
So if we go to our polygon subj
02:00
and we click on one of those,
02:02
you can see this is the geometry that's actually being created.
02:05
And in this case, it's being created by four edges. So the
02:09
all this kind of polygon you can have is a triangle.
02:11
So three edges creating one of these and this one is four sided. So we call that a quad.
02:17
So our three main types of subj objects are going to be a vertex,
02:20
the vertices are connected by edges
02:22
you can see here and then three or more of those edges combined to make polygons.
02:27
And this is the actual geometry that we see in our scenes.
02:30
Now, once we have a polygon in this state,
02:33
there are several things that we can do to this and
02:35
there are several places where we can find the tools.
02:38
So as we have these different sub objects selected,
02:41
you can see in our modify panel,
02:42
we get a lot of different options for what
02:44
we can do with those different subj objects.
02:47
So for instance, if I go to polygon and I select this particular polygon,
02:52
come down to edit polygons,
02:54
you can see there are several tools here.
02:55
Extrude is going to be a tool that you're gonna be using a lot.
02:59
If you were to just click on the extrude button, come over here and click and drag.
03:03
You can see
03:03
I can drag that new geometry in or out of the object.
03:07
And with that tool still selected, I can continue to come in and do those extrudes.
03:13
We can also click on the boxes next to
03:15
these tools to bring up settings which will enable you
03:18
to change how the extrude happens,
03:20
the amount of the extrude
03:22
and then you'll want to check this.
03:24
So this will allow you to, to make some changes to how the tool works on the fly.
03:28
We can also do something like an inset
03:31
that is like an extrude but happens on the surface of that polygon.
03:34
So it's still planar.
03:35
This is really good for creating pipes and things like that or elements that need to
03:39
have some kind of support edges around them before we continue to extrude them out.
03:43
Now, in this modify panel,
03:44
you'll find lots of different things that you can do with these particular
03:48
tools.
03:49
If we go to edges,
03:50
you can see that the tools that we can use change based on what we have selected.
03:54
Now, another area that we can find tools that we can use is going to be the ribbon.
03:58
So let's go back to polygon
04:00
and let's select the polygon kind of up here
04:03
and you can select multiple polygons by holding down control
04:06
and clicking. So we'll click on those four
04:09
and let's go ahead and open up our
04:11
ribbon.
04:12
And now you can see, whereas before we didn't have really much going on in this ribbon
04:16
with this polygon selection here,
04:18
you can see it opens up a lot of tools that we're able to use.
04:22
You can see the groups listed by editing geometry, polygons, loops, et cetera. OK.
04:28
We can modify the selection that we have, if we'd like to select a loop or a ring,
04:32
we can do that here.
04:33
And this is under the first section of the ribbon here.
04:36
The modeling section,
04:37
there's also a free form section which we'll look at in a moment.
04:40
But the tools that we can use here are
04:43
very much the same. So if we come under polygons, you can see there is an extrude here
04:47
so I can click on that extrude by hover over this.
04:50
You can see I can shift click for settings.
04:53
So this brings up that window that we talked about earlier.
04:55
Click the checkmark.
04:57
You can also come in here to this little arrow next
04:58
to extrude and click on the extrude settings as well.
05:01
If we do this inset
05:03
and let's actually do the settings.
05:05
If we come up to this type here, we can change this from group to by polygon,
05:09
which will now do the inset based on each particular polygon instead of
05:14
the actual group. So depending on what you wanna do,
05:16
you can change this. And that's one of the advantages of using the settings.
05:20
If we want to get out of this without performing the actual extrude or inset,
05:24
we could just click the little X.
05:26
We can also, if we just select the object as a whole,
05:28
you can see there are still some tools that we can use.
05:31
For instance, if we wanted to add some edge loops here, we could turn on swift loop.
05:35
And you can see I'm just hovering the mouse over and it gives us a
05:38
little preview indicator of where that edge would be if I simply clicked like that,
05:43
that enables me to add an edge loop very, very quickly to our model.
Video transcript
00:04
But once you've got the primitive added to your scene,
00:06
let's go ahead and add a quick box here.
00:09
Once you've got that primitive, you can go to modify again.
00:12
Like I said, you can change the length, width and height,
00:14
you can change the segments.
00:16
But really, that's all you can do.
00:18
We can't do any sort of modeling on this. We can't use our uh poly modelling tools.
00:22
We can't even move the sub objects.
00:25
So what we wanna do is convert this to a state
00:27
where we can start to do some modeling on it.
00:29
And there are really two main states that we can convert this to a mesh or a poly.
00:34
If we right click on this object and we come down to convert to.
00:38
You can see
00:39
there's editable mesh and editable poly.
00:42
In order to take advantage of a lot of the poly modelling tools in three Ds Macs.
00:46
Normally you'll want to convert this to an editable poly rather than an edible mesh.
00:51
So we'll go ahead and say convert to edible polly as we do this,
00:53
watch the modify panel where it says box,
00:56
you can see now it says editable polly.
00:58
And there's also a little indicator letting us
00:60
know that there's something underneath this hierarchy.
01:03
If we click on this little arrow, you can see now the subj
01:06
objects in this polygon.
01:07
Let's talk for a moment about what the subj objects of a polygon are.
01:11
So the first subj object is going to be a vertex
01:13
and a vertex is simply a point in 3d space.
01:17
So an X value A Y value and a Z value in 3d space, it really doesn't have a size or mass.
01:24
We can see a little bit of an indicator of
01:25
where it is just so we're able to manipulate it,
01:27
but it's really just three numbers in space.
01:30
Now, an edge
01:31
is basically a completely straight line
01:34
that connects
01:35
two points or two vertices, vertices is gonna be the plural of vertex,
01:40
two of those vertices connected by an edge.
01:43
Again, the edge doesn't really have a, a mass or a size to it.
01:47
It's really just a line between two points in space.
01:49
It's always going to be straight.
01:51
The third subj
01:52
object that I wanna talk about is the one that we're actually going to see
01:55
and that's a polygon or sometimes you'll see it referred to as a face.
01:58
So if we go to our polygon subj
02:00
and we click on one of those,
02:02
you can see this is the geometry that's actually being created.
02:05
And in this case, it's being created by four edges. So the
02:09
all this kind of polygon you can have is a triangle.
02:11
So three edges creating one of these and this one is four sided. So we call that a quad.
02:17
So our three main types of subj objects are going to be a vertex,
02:20
the vertices are connected by edges
02:22
you can see here and then three or more of those edges combined to make polygons.
02:27
And this is the actual geometry that we see in our scenes.
02:30
Now, once we have a polygon in this state,
02:33
there are several things that we can do to this and
02:35
there are several places where we can find the tools.
02:38
So as we have these different sub objects selected,
02:41
you can see in our modify panel,
02:42
we get a lot of different options for what
02:44
we can do with those different subj objects.
02:47
So for instance, if I go to polygon and I select this particular polygon,
02:52
come down to edit polygons,
02:54
you can see there are several tools here.
02:55
Extrude is going to be a tool that you're gonna be using a lot.
02:59
If you were to just click on the extrude button, come over here and click and drag.
03:03
You can see
03:03
I can drag that new geometry in or out of the object.
03:07
And with that tool still selected, I can continue to come in and do those extrudes.
03:13
We can also click on the boxes next to
03:15
these tools to bring up settings which will enable you
03:18
to change how the extrude happens,
03:20
the amount of the extrude
03:22
and then you'll want to check this.
03:24
So this will allow you to, to make some changes to how the tool works on the fly.
03:28
We can also do something like an inset
03:31
that is like an extrude but happens on the surface of that polygon.
03:34
So it's still planar.
03:35
This is really good for creating pipes and things like that or elements that need to
03:39
have some kind of support edges around them before we continue to extrude them out.
03:43
Now, in this modify panel,
03:44
you'll find lots of different things that you can do with these particular
03:48
tools.
03:49
If we go to edges,
03:50
you can see that the tools that we can use change based on what we have selected.
03:54
Now, another area that we can find tools that we can use is going to be the ribbon.
03:58
So let's go back to polygon
04:00
and let's select the polygon kind of up here
04:03
and you can select multiple polygons by holding down control
04:06
and clicking. So we'll click on those four
04:09
and let's go ahead and open up our
04:11
ribbon.
04:12
And now you can see, whereas before we didn't have really much going on in this ribbon
04:16
with this polygon selection here,
04:18
you can see it opens up a lot of tools that we're able to use.
04:22
You can see the groups listed by editing geometry, polygons, loops, et cetera. OK.
04:28
We can modify the selection that we have, if we'd like to select a loop or a ring,
04:32
we can do that here.
04:33
And this is under the first section of the ribbon here.
04:36
The modeling section,
04:37
there's also a free form section which we'll look at in a moment.
04:40
But the tools that we can use here are
04:43
very much the same. So if we come under polygons, you can see there is an extrude here
04:47
so I can click on that extrude by hover over this.
04:50
You can see I can shift click for settings.
04:53
So this brings up that window that we talked about earlier.
04:55
Click the checkmark.
04:57
You can also come in here to this little arrow next
04:58
to extrude and click on the extrude settings as well.
05:01
If we do this inset
05:03
and let's actually do the settings.
05:05
If we come up to this type here, we can change this from group to by polygon,
05:09
which will now do the inset based on each particular polygon instead of
05:14
the actual group. So depending on what you wanna do,
05:16
you can change this. And that's one of the advantages of using the settings.
05:20
If we want to get out of this without performing the actual extrude or inset,
05:24
we could just click the little X.
05:26
We can also, if we just select the object as a whole,
05:28
you can see there are still some tools that we can use.
05:31
For instance, if we wanted to add some edge loops here, we could turn on swift loop.
05:35
And you can see I'm just hovering the mouse over and it gives us a
05:38
little preview indicator of where that edge would be if I simply clicked like that,
05:43
that enables me to add an edge loop very, very quickly to our model.
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