Parts Tree Panel

In Dust3D, model consists of parts, part consists of nodes. User manipulates nodes’s position and radius, toggle part’s settings, then the mesh autogenerated by Dust3D.

Top Mini Buttons

(From left to right)

• Visible/(H)idden

Toggle the part’s visibility on canvas, the mesh generation would not be affected. You can use it to hide some parts, then make edit other parts not been covered.

• (L)ock/Unlock

Toggle the part’s edit lock. Locked part would still be visible on canvas, but can not been checked or edited.

• (J)oin/Not Join(to Final Mesh)

Enable or disable the part, affects the final mesh generation. Unjoined part would not appear in the final result, only shows preview on Parts Tree Panel.

• (M)irror Modifier

If there are two parts have the same shape but one sit left, the other sit right. It’s like the human body, you no need to make the arm part two times, just once, and mirror it.

• Color Picker

Configure the part’s color and material settings. If there isn’t color chosen, the Rendered Model will be show as the configured preference color. The color chosen here will exported as a material color in the result output.

Click the mini button, a tool widget will popup shows the chosen color, solubility, and material list.

If one part configured color solubility, the generated color texture seam between the neighbor parts will be gradient filled using this part’s color with the specified solubility.

Click the material preview image to choose material. Hold control while click to cancel the material selection.

Rendered Part Preview

Shows the rendered image of the whole part’s generated mesh. Current hovered or selected parts will be highlighted with a different gradient background color. If the mesh failed to generate, the rendered image will show as pure red color indicate you should adjust some nodes to avoid the generated mesh self intersection.

Bottom Mini Buttons

• Subdivide

Toggle the subdivision of mesh generation. The generated mesh will be more smooth if this option is enabled.

• End Ro(U)ndable Modifier

Toggle the begin/end roundable (Flat / Rounded). If you want the cut effect, choose not rounded, otherwise, the edge end will be rounded (Automatically added one more small face).

• Chamfer

Enable this to bevel the edge.

• Cut Face

Cut face is the extruding shape. Cut face could be configured as Quad, Pentagon, Hexagon, Triangle, and User Defined. You can turn a part to cut face from the part context menu by choosing target as Cut Face.

The rotation parameter on the popup widget controls the rotation of the cut face along the edge direction.

• Thickness Modifier

The are two parameters for this modifier, one controls the thickness along the base plane normal, the other controls the thickness along the perpendicular of base plane normal.

Context Menu

Right click on Parts List Panel to trigger Context Menu.

• Base

Mesh layout and thickness adjustment are depend on base plane calculation. There are five type of options: Dynamic, Average, Side Plane, Front Plane, and Top Plane, see the demo below.

• Target

You can turn part as a cut face from here. Once a part becomes cut face, other parts can choose it as a extruding shape.

• Mode

Normal represents the normal mesh union, inverse represents the mesh subtraction. This release introduce Uncombined mode, which represents the component would not take part in the mesh boolean algorithms. Be noticed that, model with uncombined mode component exists, would not be generate as a watertight mesh.

• Hide / Show / Show All / Hide All

Check mini button Visible/(H)idden.

• Lock All / Unlock All

Check mini button _(L)ock/Unlock.

• Move Up / Move Down / Move To Top / Move To Bottom

The process of mesh generation is mainly combining all the parts in listed order, so move up and down may affect the generated result. The order is especially important for inverse part been placed, if the inverse part sit in the first place of the list, the inverse operation would never happen, because nothing to invert before it.

• New Group / Move To

Parts can be grouped as component, component can contain sub components. During the mesh generating progress, component’s mesh is been cached, so make multiple level of components can reduce the total mesh generating time.