The Retopologize Tools Panel

When you are in the Power Surfacing RE tab, you will see the Retopologize Tools rollout in the Command panel. These options can be very useful during the retopo process.

Hide Reference Mesh  

When checked, this hides the reference mesh, allowing you a full view of the SubD retopo mesh.

Enable Z buffering

In order to see the retopo mesh’s faces, which will normally fall behind the reference mesh’s faces, Z buffering is generally turned off. It may be useful to turn it on when checking the Interpolative result. Depending on the curvature of the model, you may also want to adjust the amount of offset used when Enable Z buffering is turned off. That is managed through the Power Surfacing Options dialog under “Display.” It is called Reference Mesh Push Back.

Enable Z Buffer turned off (the default during the retopologizing process) and showing the retopo surface in front of the reference mesh, left image. The center image, shows Z buffering turned on, where only vertices and edges on top of the reference mesh’s surface show. Right image shows mesh after interpolation where the two surfaces should occupy the same space.

Constrained to Mesh  

In this mode, which is the default during the retopo process, any vertex with its constraint attribute set to true is constrained to the reference mesh. If Constrained to Mesh is turned off, vertices will not be constrained to the mesh, regardless of the state of their constraint attribute. This provides you with a way to affect the vertices without changing their constraint attribute. When re-enabled, you may need to use Snap Vertices to Reference Geometry to update the locations.

Select Constrained  

This retopo-specific selection filter allows you to select all adjacent constrained faces or vertices, or, all un-constrained adjacent faces or vertices. The possible selections will highlight during hover. The selection filter works with vertex, edge and face selection.

Snap Closest Point      Snap Normal



The retopo mesh showing constrained (magenta) and un-constrained vertices (black), left, adjacent constrained vertices, center, and adjacent unconstrained vertices, right.

Select Constrained  

This retopo-specific selection filter allows you to select all adjacent constrained faces or vertices, or, all un-constrained adjacent faces or vertices. The possible selections will highlight during hover. The selection filter works with vertex, edge and face selection.

Snapping options: Constrained to Mesh turned off, left, Snap Closest Point, center, Snap Normal, right

Constraint Snapping Options  

When snapping newly constrained vertices to the reference mesh, you have two options: Snap Closest Point, where a vertex will snap to the closest point on the reference mesh, or Snap Normal, where the vertex will move along its vertex normal (the average of its surrounding faces’ normals) until it reaches the reference mesh’s surface. A face normal is an imaginary line drawn perpendicular to the face.  

In the following example, Constrained mode was turned off while the horizontal subdivisions were created over the recessed part of the model. In the center image, Snap to Closest Point was set before turning on Constrained mode and using Snap Vertices to Reference Geometry. In the far right image, Snap Normal was used. The snap to Normal option may give better results when creating the retopo mesh outside of Constrained to Mesh mode and snapping onto the reference mesh afterwards.

Show Ref. Mesh On Conversion

Sometimes it is useful to see the reference mesh as you are working with Solidworks tools outside of the Power Surfacing editing mode.  This check box will keep the reference mesh visible and allow you to create Solidworks geometry (sketches, holes, bosses, etc.) while using the reference mesh as a visual reference.  

Created with the Personal Edition of HelpNDoc: Benefits of a Help Authoring Tool