Simplify/Repair Polylines

[Kevin McAllister]

I would like a better simplify/repair polyline tool or command. See this thread - https://techboard.vectorworks.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=225091#Post225091

Why isn't there a one click solution that does the same as extruding and extracting? Clearly the extract process is pretty smart and creates much more user friendly shapes that the original.

Using the Simplify Polys command doesn't do much at all. Surprisingly little in fact.

We need something better. The original shape in that discussion thread has over 600 vertices, way more than needed. Its in everyone's best interest to have an efficient way to clean up a shape like this.

Kevin

[Kevin McAllister]

Take a look at the Rebuild command in Rhino too. Its so powerful.

And how about a way to simplify a polyline that only affects curve vertices and maintains corner vertices.

KM

[Art V]

The simplify poly does work, but it takes experimenting with the settings and may still not generate what you would like depending on the polyline.

Especially with contour polylines this gets a bit tricky, allowing too much deviation destroys the contour shape and when you want to keep the shape as closely as possible there is not enough reduction of nodes, so I'm all for improvement in that area.

My guess is that the extract process tries to create bezier polylines where possible and as such generates the more user friendly shapes than the simplyfy command could as that only reduces points and does not convert to bezier. If the simplify polylines command could do that we might already be halfway with regard to the improvement of the tool.

[Kevin McAllister]

The simplify poly does work, but it takes experimenting with the settings and may still not generate what you would like depending on the polyline.

Just to clarify, my comments about it not doing much refer specifically to the file in the thread I linked to. The shape has 600+ points and even when you turn the tolerances way up it only removes 10 or fewer points.

KM

[Art V]

Oddly enough when I turn up the tolerance it removes plenty of points, but at the cost of a more or less disfigured shape depending on the amount of tolerance.

[Art V]

Bump

As this issue seems a bit depending on the polylines in question (see comments above)... have any updates been made to the simplify polylines command to improve its usabiility?

[Kevin McAllister]

In addition to the original wish, could we have the Simplify Polys command appear contextually in the popup menu when you right click on a polygon/polyline?

 

KM