circle to cylinder extrude

[buz]

the cylinder winds up as a 12 sided figure. How do I get it to be a smooth cylinder?

tfyh

Buz

[Robert Anderson]

The Extrude command produces a polygonal cylinder. You can change the number of facets with the "3D resolution" preferences on the 3D tab of the Preferences dialog. If you want a non-faceted cylinder, you can also try using the Tapered Extrude command with a 0 degree taper. This will produce a NURBS cylinder. Lastly, play with the Facet Angle preference setting in the Line Render tab of the Document Preferences dialog. This will control faceting on hidden-line renders.

[Guest]

If you are in VW 9 and previous, the Facet Angle is a plugin object you will need to download at vectordepot.com.

[Andrew Bell@NV]

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Anderson:

The Extrude command produces a polygonal cylinder.

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This isn't quite accurate. It creates a "true" cylinder, but for various purposes (drawing in hidden line, wireframe, converting to mesh, etc.) we have to use a polygonal representation of that cylinder, and the number of faces we use is dependent on the 3-D conversion resolution. However, if you render a cylinder using OpenGL or RenderWorks, at least with the use nurbs checkbox checked, you'll get a smooth cylinder. Likewise the solid operations treat the extruded circle as a smooth cylinder, and again if you render a solid addition of a couple of cylinders, you'll get smooth surfaces. Volume and surface area is likewise computed for a true cylinder.