Home > User Guide > Display and User Input

Faceting

The Faceter Component, generates and controls approximate polygonal representations. The polygon approximations are used in all active and static rendering, in clearance analysis, and in operations where approximations are acceptable to simplify calculations. Faceter supplies refinements to the polygons which specify how they should be generated. The ACIS faceter supports only view independent faceting.

Faceting generates approximate polygonal representations for the faces of entities while maintaining edge consistency between adjacent faces. Face faceting is performed by subdividing the face in parameter space with a grid whose increments are determined through refinements. Refinements specify the accuracy of the faceted representation. Refinements also control how triangulation is performed and whether smoothing is used to improve the aspect ratios of triangles. The faceted representation of a face is also called a mesh.

Faceting is used by all active and static renderers. Refinements for faceting have a significant effect on the rendering process. The tighter the facets, the smoother the rendered surface will be. However, the tighter the facets, the slower the rendering process becomes. On the other hand, the looser the facets, the faster the rendering process becomes, but the rendered surface will be rougher.

Entities and their refinement attributes are stored in the save file. Because facets can be regenerated from the entities and their refinements, facet information is not stored in the save file. However, facets can be output through mesh managers to an application determined data structure, which the application can manage as it sees fit.

Topics include:

[Top]

© 1989-2007 Spatial Corp., a Dassault Systèmes company. All rights reserved.