About Creating 3D Meshes

A mesh model consists of vertices, edges, and faces that use polygonal representation, including triangles and quadrilaterals, to define a 3D shape.

Unlike solid models, mesh has no mass properties. However, as with 3D solids, you can create primitive mesh forms such as boxes, cones, and pyramids.

You can modify mesh models in ways that are not available for 3D solids or surfaces. For example you can apply creases, splits, and increasing levels of smoothness. You can drag mesh subobjects (faces, edges, and vertices) to shape the mesh object. To achieve more granular results, you can refine the mesh in specific areas before modifying it.

Mesh Tessellation

Mesh tessellation provides enhanced capabilities for modeling object shapes in a more detailed way. Starting with AutoCAD-based products 2010 and later, the default mesh object type can be smoothed, creased, split, and refined. Although you can continue to create the legacy polyface and polygon mesh types, you can obtain more predictable results by converting to the newer mesh object type.

Methods for Creating Mesh

You can create mesh objects using the following methods:

About Tessellation

Tessellation is a collection of planar shapes that tile a mesh object. The tessellation divisions, visible in unselected mesh objects, mark the edges of the editable mesh faces. (To see these divisions in the Hidden or Conceptual visual styles, VSEDGES must be set to 1.)

When you smooth and refine mesh objects, you increase the density of the tessellation (the number of subdivisions).

While highly refined mesh gives you the ability to make detailed modifications, it can decrease program performance. By maintaining maximum smoothness, face, and grid levels, you can help ensure that you do not create meshes that are too dense to modify effectively (use SMOOTHMESHMAXLEV and SMOOTHMESHGRID).

Set Mesh Properties Before and After Creation

You can set defaults that control a variety of mesh properties before and after you create the mesh objects.