Sharpen Menu

Sharpening is the replacement of filleted or rounded edges with mathemati­cally correct edges.

Sharpening operations work on closed- or open-manifold polygon objects.

The Sharpen menu appears on the menu bar after Edit > Phase > Polygon Mode > Sharpen Operations

The Sharpen menu appears when all of the following are true:

• a polygon object is selected in the Model Manager, and

• only after candidates for sharpening have been ascertained by use of Curves > Create / Modify Curves or Curves > Extract Curves, and

• only after the candidates for sharpening are projected back to the poly­gon surface (if necessary) by use of Curves > Project Curves, and

• after the Sharpen menu is called up by use of Edit > Phase > Polygon Mode > Sharpen Operations.

The tools on the Sharpen menu are:

•   Extend Tangent Lines - calculates the exact position of a sharp edge by extending a tangent line from each of the two flat sides that adjoin a curve line.

• Tangent Lines to Curves - converts all tangent lines on the object to curve lines.

• Sharpen Polygons - (available after Sharpen > Extend Tan­gent Lines) creates a suggested edge that is defined by the inter­section of tangent lines from the previous step, allows that suggested edge to be smoothed, then extends the polygon mesh up to the sug­gested edge to form a sharp edge.

• Clear Tangent Lines - removes the tangent lines generated by Extend Tangent Lines.