Mesh construction

Firstly to explain mesh construction i am going to give a walk through of a object i created explaining the aspects of mesh construction along the way.

Firstly in the command panel click the create tab and then the shapes sub tab, here you can get open and closed splines. a spline is any 2D object that has veracities and segments. There are also doughnuts and eggs which involve two splines.

 Now if i remove these splines by using Ctrl + Z i find that i cant remove all of the splines due to the amount of them, therefore to allow me to undo more moves i can go to customize in the tool bar and then preferences.

 Then under the scene undo title we can select the amount of stages we wish to be able to undo in the future.

Now i am going to create an open spline using the front view port by simply selecting the line shape then clicking and dragging then repeating again until i have three points (start, middle and end) then right click to end the shape.

Now we can go to the modify tab and click the + key next to the line and you can see we have vertex, segments and spline.

Now i am going to life the middle vortex to create a triangular shape.

Then i cloned the spline by holding the Shift key and then left clicking and dragging on the spline creating an exact replica. I have also re coloured the splines so they are easier to see, the original spline is red and the clone is green.

as i clone the spline a box appearers with the options copy, instance and reference. to clone and create a separate spline i selected instance because no matter what i change about one of the splines it will change the other one exactly causing a mirrored effect. this would then mean that i have less control and flexibly within my creation.
Now i am using the bend modifier in the drop down, make sure that the vertex sub-object is unselected, This is a demo to show the difference between a instance clone and a copy clone.

no i am going to remove my instance clone and make two copy clones this has no referencing system, so now i have three splines.

Now i am going to attach these splines together. this is done by selecting one of the splines and then selecting attach in the geometry roll down in the control panel.



















I then hover over the other splines and will see a + symbol with four circles, once this appears simply click on the spline you wish to attach. in this case i am attaching all three of my splines. dont forget to deselect the attach tool once done. So now they are all selected.












Now i am going to turn this into a surface using the cross section tool in the geomatry roll down (same area as attach) and now i simply click from one spline to the other.


Again make sure to turn the cross section tool off after use, just like the attach tool.











now as you can see there isn't a surface but it has created a structure between each of the splines which i can now place a surface one using the surface modification (in the modification drop down) and now i have a surface.



















Now if i go back into the spline level of this object and use the vertex sub-object and select the veracities i can then modify them even after i have placed the surface.








As you can see i dropped the center of my surface downward and as you can see it gets rid of the surface and just shows the wire frame structure. if i wish to see the surface at the same time to know what it would look like after these modifications i can select the end result button (looks like a Solid bar) in the command panel just below the modification selection box.

Now i can also add effects such as bezier (selected by right clicking and in the top left quadrant selecting bezier) to alter my surface shape.and as you can see now i have a curve travelling through my surface.

Now This doesn't look very detailed. This is due to the low amount of sub-divisions in the surface, in order to view the sub-divisions properly i have to select the surface layer in the modification box and then in the modification drop down select edit poly modifier.










and now i get a much greater surface division.












Now i have more sub-objects that can be selected and now i have edges, (when this is a spline between veracities it is called a segment but when it is a poly it is called an edge). I also have the sub-object border which if i was to create a hole in the poly it would detect the edges and fill the hole back in, and finally we have element which is the whole object. this is used to select a complete object or set of attached splines if there are multiple objects within the space. now again on top of the edit poly modifier i am going to select the mesh-smooth modifier from the drop down.


Now im going to use NURMS (sub-division method  and so now when i choose the sub-division amount you will see the surface curves get smoother.

However be careful using this as you are creating more polygons when you increase the division amount causing more stress on your CPU. Now i have all these modification tools on these simple splines, i can also travel back to the base splines, however when i do i get a warning message basically telling me that altering the splines it may cause unwanted effects due to the modifications in place for example, if i accept the message and then move my poly it in fact break my surface, as you can see half of my surface is missing.

This is due to the veracities that were connected being broken apart. So if editing/re-editing your object be careful as it is very easy to break your object, however you can select all the veracities together in that area and it will give you more control as you are altering the original shape without breaking it.

Now i am quickly going to show the curve feature on a spline, so i will create a new spline and make a triangular shape again.



So now if i right click on the centre veracities and look in the top left quadrant i am able to select the smooth tool, this then makes the spline automatically curve.


























However there isn't much control over the curve other than moving the curves focus point back and forth, however i can look at the tangent in and out of the vertex by right clicking again and selecting bezier again. This now creates a line that when pivoted changes the curvature of the spline.





































COMPUTER MONITOR


firstly I created a box with the dimensions 80cm - 80cm - 5cm.















Now I am going to turn this box into an editable poly and then select the sub object "edge" and i am going to select two parallel edges. I am then going to right click and select connect, this will simply connect the two parallel edges. I am also able to move this connection to my desired location along the object.

Im actually going to create two connections by selecting the small box next to the right click and the connect to be able to type in my wanted parameters.  

Now as you can see I can change the segments, pinch and slide. Pinch moves the segments closer or further apart and slide moves the segments along the face of the object. Now if I go to the polygon sub object and select the poly I just created (section between the segments) and then select extrude in the roll down bar (or the settings box next to extrude for more specific measurements) I can now extrude the poly by simply clicking and dragging the poly in the direction I wish, as you can see I'm going to drag it upwards to create the stand for my monitor. I can then use the move tool to slant the extension.

Now I'm going to extrude again on the top of the first extrusion and then using the + button in the extrusion settings I'm going to repeat the same changes three times giving me a total of four extrusions. 

Now using the polygon sub object again I'm going to bevel and extrude to create a place for the monitor screen to connect to the stand. I'm also going to use the bevel tool to create the screen. 

Now that I have the outline of the screen I'm going to give it some depth with another extrude and then use the insert tool to make the screen more realistic by adding depth into the screen and then a final bevel to finish the screens depth. 

Now I'm going to add a slight slight rotation to the screen to show that the screen will pivot.

Then I just added a few features like curving the stand and support on the back.