Basic Sweeping Operations I
| The Sweep tools provide sweeping and lathing operations. Make sure you know how to select faces before continuing (see Point Editing page). Any face on any object can be swept, however, sweeping usually is considered to be a means of "extruding" 2D shapes into 3D ones, like text and polygons. | |
| Sweep Tools: |
 Left-click-hold on the current sweep button to bring up the Sweep panel. |
 Sweep: |
The Sweep tool sweeps the selected face into a new slice or layer. |
| Sweeping is done by first selecting a face. The Point Editing page showed how to do this. | |
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This next part can be done in any order, but I prefer the following task order: 1. Select Point Edit: Face tool Another possible order: 1, 4, 2, 3 Now that the face is selected, left-click on the Sweep tool. If it isn't already showing, left-click hold on whatever tool is showing and select the Sweep tool. |
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| Once the Sweep tool is selected, the active face is 'swept' up from the original face. |
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| This new face can be modified by moving it
up or down, left or right; by rotating it; and by scaling it. Here, I selected the Scale tool, left all axes selected, then placed the mouse on the face, did a left-click hold, and dragged the mouse to the right. Dragging the mouse to the left would have brought the face in instead of out. |
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| Here, I selected only the x-axis and dragged
to the right: Again, dragging the mouse to the left would have brought the two face edges in instead of out. Selecting the y-axis would have scaled the opposite face edges. |
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| Here, I rotated the face: |
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| and moved here: |
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| Now that we've swept the face once, we can
do it again. Let's go back to this version of the object where I scaled the new face along all the axes. |
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| Clicking on the Sweep tool again
sweeps the new face in exactly the same direction as you just modified it. For example, if I scaled the face in, then the new face would have swept in. If I moved the face up, then the new face would have swept up. |
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| Instead of leaving the face the way it was,
I next scaled it in towards the center (left-click/drag left). If I had dragged right, then it would have been scaled farther out from the object. |
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| Click on the Sweep tool again and it
follows the last editing method by going up and in. Neat, huh? A note of caution, if you move a face down to resize it and the next sweep needs to go up, make sure that you move the face down a smidge more than you need it, then go back up, otherwise, the new face will go down instead of up. |
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| For another example, the face was swept up,
then moved down along the z-axis. Smaller slices of the object make for
smoother transitions, but also increase the polygon count. I moved the edge back up a smidge so that my next face would go up, then scaled the face out. |
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| Clicking on the Sweep tool again, swept the face up at exactly the same height and angle as the one I just modified. |
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| I then moved the new face up along the z-axis, without resizing it. |
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| One point to remember when moving, scaling, or rotating the faces, is that depending on which axes you select will determine which mouse buttons will need to be used. See the Moving & Resizing page if you need a refresher on this. | |
| The next page will continue with sweeping and explain how to modify segments and edge placement - Basic Sweeping II. | |