Simplifying Polys?

[trashcan]

I have tons of shapes that I'm pulling from a DWG. To clean them up I am composing the shapes. Way faster than redrawing. But, coming from the DWG there are a ton of unnecessary vertices. When I go to simplify polys, even with an inch of deviation, nothing changes. Normally I wouldn't sweat this but when I start extruding these shapes, performance starts to really lag. Any ideas? 

 

[markdd]

This is an old problem when developing objects that have been imported from DWG's. Sometimes the Simplify Polys command will have some effect, but on the examples such as the one above, I find it easier and less hassle in the long run to redraw using Lines and Arcs. These give much neater results and is the best practice that I know of.

 

Not ideał, I know. Sometimes the Inner or Outer boundary modes of the Polyline tool can reduce the vertex count, but in my experience this is not often then case.

 

It would be really great to hear what others think.

[trashcan]

I was worried you might say that. I'm surprised there isn't a more intelligent reduce capability. 

 

This is just one of many objects I'm working on and you can imagine how cumbersome redrawing everything will be:

 

Though I better get started

[markdd]

This looks like the perfect candidate for a Tile resource rather than all those Polylines. If you are going to cut out a surface in 3D, then I would suggest you make a Texture instead using the Alpha channel of a png image to drill the hole.

[trashcan]

That's a good call, in general, but this tile isn't consistent and the alignment needs to be exact. I finished drawing it pretty fast. Just gotta go slow and steady I guess. Curious about what other folks thoughts are re: automated simplifying. 

 

From the DWG - 34 vertices

redraw method using filet - 12 vertices

redraw method using arcs etc - 8 vertices

 

All the exact same dimensions. 

[Pat Stanford]

I have no idea if it will still work, but there was a free script that did this. It might have been the original source of the VW command.

 

Look for Simplify Polys on this page. It is from VW8.5, so I don't know if it will compile/run or not.

 

http://www.vectordepot.com/older_plug-ins.html

[trashcan]

Installed fine but not showing in the plugins menu on relaunch. Should I be looking elsewhere? 

[Pat Stanford]

It is not a plug-in. It is a script.

 

Go to the Resource Manager and create a new resource of type Script. Paste the script in the Script Editor Window.

 

Select you poly (I didn't check if it works on multiple polys) and double click on the script in the Script Palette. Enter the max offset and click OK.

[trashcan]

Duh thanks @Pat Stanford

 

That script works ok. Even with 0 deviation it still deviates. But it reduces vertices from 34 to 18 - but unfortunately it's not the same shape anymore 😞 - redraw it is... Surprised there isn't a "smarter" / automated way to do this.