3DS Max 2016: How to select by connected polys?
ngon master
So I must be missing something here because I cannot for the life of me get this.
How do I select connected polys in 3DS MAX? Frequently in my job I receive meshes that are attached together but not contiguous. I'm trying to select all of the polys of one of these pieces to separate them out and later group them. Basically doing clean up, but is there no way to select by contiguous poly, or connected poly, or some other synonymous term?
I've found a post from 08 that says something about using the selection filter "Polygon_Island" but the script he provides doesn't work in 2016 and the listing is no longer in the dropdown.
How do I select connected polys in 3DS MAX? Frequently in my job I receive meshes that are attached together but not contiguous. I'm trying to select all of the polys of one of these pieces to separate them out and later group them. Basically doing clean up, but is there no way to select by contiguous poly, or connected poly, or some other synonymous term?
I've found a post from 08 that says something about using the selection filter "Polygon_Island" but the script he provides doesn't work in 2016 and the listing is no longer in the dropdown.
Replies
What I am looking for is similar to the functionality of Maya where if you were to double LMB click a face/poly it will select all connected geometry.
Your description is confusing because the mesh cannot be "all one element" and also have a "seperate piece".
Double-clicking a poly in Maya expands the selection to the poly shell, and Element mode does that in Max, like PolyHertz said.
A screenshot of what happening and another of what you expect to happen would be helpful.
So this is what I expect to happen. As I select the lever in element mode it selects only the polys that are physically attached and share vertices. Excluding the other elements.
However, this is what happens in the case that I'm wondering about. When I select the lever in element mode the entire mesh is selected regardless of whether or not the polys share vertices.
The issue as it's evolving is that I cannot replicate this behavior on my home machine. At home element mode follows the exact behavior that you have pointed out. The only way that I can get this strange behavior is if I select all verts in the entire mesh and weld them which would in essence make everything one element. Which would make sense, however in the 'at work' mesh there are clear spaces between what would be elements such as below.
The nut in the image has no touching geometry or shared vertices with the post. But at work it will still select as one element. Is it possible that before I received this mesh that someone managed to make like hidden or ghost edges/verts? That would be the only thing that could explain this I'm thinking.
It might be worth putting an stl check on it and seeing if that picks anything out too.
It is possible to hide subobjects but the object would have to have been previously edited in max so if its just been imported you can probably discount that.
@poopipe I will try the STL check as well. I'm fairly certain that the mesh in question and when this does happen is from someone else importing the CATIA data into 3ds max and then converting said files into editable polys. When I did the same the only way that I could achieve the issue is by doing a lot of things in an odd way.
This can very well be a possibility since the pipeline for this isn't written in stone at the moment and it seems there is a disconnect in the proper way of doing things and what will be the quickest way. Something that I unfortunately have no control over. But I will try these methods and see what I get out of them.
Make sure home and work on the the latest update of Max. Or maybe try 3ds Max 2018 with update 4. I remember 2016 had a lot of bugs so I avoided it altogether. From 2018 you can Save As 2016 if the rest of your team needs that format.
Personally I'd bring the original source data back in so I could be sure nobody broke it
So the grow select or select by angle didn't work unfortunately. A lot of the same behavior as the element select carried through to that method.
The STL check did work on some cases paired with a turn to poly modifier, so thank you on that. I assume the meshes that that method didn't work on are too far messed up to be helped other than by hand. Those tips though did work on 80% of the cases that I was running into so big improvement.
A lot of this it seems like I need to talk to some of the managers or higher ups here because there is some obvious pipeline issues if these kin of issues are as common as they are. Something or someone going wrong on the import of different file types earlier in the line. For now the STL check and turn to poly are helping my end greatly.
I'll also have to bring up a change to 2017 at the least because I certainly agree with 2016 being shit. Seems like a bad year for everyone lol. Right now I know were are locked into 2016 for a couple of months so fingers crossed that things are on the way. Thank you everyone for all the help and the knowledge I'll update if things change or a new solution arises!