Poly Knit surface tool

Stitches together two disjoint sets of polygons.

See also: Poly Cap, Poly Loft, Poly Stitch

Poly Knit can be used to manually knit joining polygons between existing polygons. Polygons are created by specifying a list of input points from which to “knit” the new polygons. Both triangles and quadrilaterals can be created.

Click on at least three geometry points to define a knitting path, then to complete. To modify the path after it has been completed, ⇧ Shift + anywhere to continue building the path. ⇧ Shift + close to an end-point along the path to continue building from that end-point.

With only four points specified, PolyKnit can find two paths of unshared connected edges and use their points to knit polygons. Each of the paths is called a “meta” edge. The polygons that are created along these paths can either be triangles or quadrilaterals. The paths are computed to minimize the number of edges that are produced (and thus minimizing the number of polygons that are produced). The “meta” edges are drawn in a thicker line to give visual feedback that the resulting knit will produce multiple polygons for this edge. Clicking on the next point will disable “meta” edge detection for that edge and will force PolyKnit to use only the edge that was specified.

It is important to note that points are specified in a strip-like fashion. The points should be specified in an order such that they zig-zag along the geometry to knit. The first two points, for example, should each belong to the opposite geometries that are to be knitted together.

If the points are being specified interactively, the operation will try to automatically determine whether the polygons created should be triangles or quads. For example, to start knitting first click on a vertex, then click on a vertex of the opposite set. Now, if the third point clicked belongs to the first set, we build triangles, otherwise we build quads. This process is carried out throughout the knit, allowing you to intermix the creation of quads and triangles. Ctrl + anywhere will swap the last knit between triangles and quad. For example, if the last two knits were triangles, Ctrl + will turn them into a quad; or if the last knit was a quad, Ctrl + will turn it into two triangles.