Is collapsing geometry a good thing to do? Makes the file about 25% larger!

[Former Member]

I am creating a file that is a large piece of industrial equipment. It has access panels that are bolted on the unit, To make it easier for the end user to manually pull those panels off the unit, I collapse those parts into a single piece of geometry.

This is how I made the file. Drawn in Inventor. Imported into 3DS MAX 2014. Output to 3DS file. Imported into VE. Resulting file is:

2.9 Megs

318 Objects

150,000 Verts

144,879 faces

When I start collapsing parts to make if a simpler file for the end user, this is what I get:

3.8 megs

20 objects

153,148 verts

147,131 faces

That's 25% increase in file size!

I would have thought the file size would have decreased, Is collapsing a good thing to do? Is there another way to accomplish this?

Thanks,

Dean

[former_member261344 · Accepted solution]

Hi Dean,

As you noticed, when you collapsed geometry, you increased the filesize due to additional vertices and faces being created. When you collapse geometry, the software combines the two objects by recreating areas where they are joined; thus, if you have complex shapes, it will take more faces and vertices to join them together.

Being user friendly and accessible to the designer is great but that does not necessarily translate to a lower size file. You can use the reduce model function to reduce the file size. You may not want to reduce the faces of the entire model so I may recommend you explicitly selecting objects that may be more appropriate to reduce.

I hope that helps.

Regards,

Kelvin

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Kevin, Thanks for the reply.

I guess my last question would be:

If the end user wants to pull apart a grouping of geometry (an access panel with 10 bolts) as a single piece of geometry, is my only option to collapse the geometry? Without collapsing, is there a way to link the geometry together so if one piece moves, all 11 pieces move?

Thanks again for your help!

Dean

[former_member261344 · Accepted solution]

Hi Dean,

Yes, you can select all the objects together, right click and 'Create Group'. The objects will act as one then. You can ungroup them if you need to move each one individually afterwards.

Kelvin

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Kevin,

When I select multiple objects, it simply throws them all in a common folder. (when I am looking at the "scene" pallet) When I click on one of the objects only that single object is selected, not the group. To select the group I have to go to the Scene pallet and click on the folder. Then VE selects everything in that folder and I can move them as a group. Is this acting correctly?

Dean

[former_member261344 · Accepted solution]

Hi Dean,

Yes that is behaving correctly.

Kelvin

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

You can create a group an then "Close the node". This makes them behave as one but they are not collapsed. Also are you saving the final result to .rh?

If so there are compression setting I can recommend to achieve the smallest size and maintain quality.

FYI - wouldn't recommend 3DS for translation as it deletes the normals on the model and the smoothing sometimes doesn't look as good as it should. We will have a plugin for MAX/Maya available soon on SCN and you can save .rh format directly from MAX.

Saving .rh files...

When saving .rh format these will work for any scene and will result is smaller file size. There are other ways to further optimize but are a bit more involved. (Also if no textures will be used you can turn UV Quality to "Off".