Swift 3D V4.5 User Guide 7.
In the Perspective Viewport, change the display mode to Smooth Shaded, making sure to turn the Show Wire Overlay option off as well. Notice that there now exists an edge, which is shown by a clear difference in the shading, between the two halves of the sphere.
Selecting Smoothing Groups When your model begins to get complicated, the potential to lose track of just which surface areas have been assigned to which Smoothing Groups can definitely start to occur. Fortunately, the Smoothing Group number grid has two states to it, Select and Assign. As the name indicates, when the Select button is chosen you can click on a number and the surface areas associated with that Smoothing Group number will all become selected in the Viewport. Notice also that only those numbers that have been assigned to surfaces are enabled in Select, so this is also a great indicator of which Smoothing Group numbers are still available for use. You can also go about detecting Smoothing Group assignments from the mesh itself. If you hover over different parts of the mesh in the Viewport with either the Select Faces or Select Surface Groups tools (make sure Mouseover is enabled on the Selection property page), you can see the Smoothing Group assignment for each surface because that number will temporarily become depressed. If you actually click down to select a surface, the depressed state of that number will lock until that surface area becomes deselected again.
To select smoothing groups: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Start with the sphere created in our previous steps on assigning a Smoothing Group. From the Smoothing Group property page, click on the Select button. When Smoothing Groups are assigned those numbers become enabled, so in the case of our sphere Smoothing Groups 1 and 2 should be enabled. Click on Smoothing Group 1 in order to select that surface area. Click back on Smoothing Group 1 in order to deselect that surface area. Next, deselect any surfaces that may be selected and then choose the Select Faces tool. Go to the Perspective Viewport and hover the mouse over any of the faces included in Smoothing Group 1. Notice how Smoothing Group 1 becomes depressed in the Properties toolbar, which is a great way to quickly ascertain smoothing group assignments.
Clearing Smoothing Groups Since surfaces can be assigned multiple smoothing groups, the only way to clear a smoothing group is to deselect the Smoothing Group number(s) assigned to a particular surface area.
To clear a smoothing group: 1. 2. 3.
Select the surface area that you wish to clear of its smoothing groups. Go to the Smoothing Groups property page and click the Assign button. Click on any of the Smoothing Group numbers assigned to that surface area to clear those numbers. (Note: This only clears that Smoothing Group number for the selected surface area. It does not clear this smoothing group for any other surface areas that might be assigned to this number.)
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