Refine Feature (Inspect › Refine Feature) fits a feature that is already in the scene again to the mesh or point cloud it was made from. "Refine to a mesh or a point cloud" means: MeshInspector takes the points of that object that lie close to the feature and whose normals are within the angle tolerance of the feature surface (in either direction, so on a thin wall the opposite face can count too if it is within the distance limit), fits the feature to them, and repeats this until the set of points stops changing. Use it when a feature was fitted to a rough selection or a few picked points and is slightly off, for example a plane that also caught a bit of a neighbouring face.
Before You Start
- Exactly one feature selected. Otherwise the button is disabled with the message Exactly 1 feature object must be selected.
- Its parent is a mesh or a point cloud. The feature must sit under that object in the Scene tree, as features created with Inspect › Create do. Otherwise you see Selected feature object must have appropriate parent object (mesh or point cloud).
The same settings are also in the Refine object section of the panel in which you create a feature (see How to Create and Measure Features).
Example
In the screenshot below, you can see a mesh together with three feature objects created from it: a plane, a line, and a point. Plane 1 is selected and will be refined against the mesh.
Clicking Refine Feature opens a dedicated panel with the following fields and settings:
- Feature Object shows the feature that will be refined. In this example, the selected feature is Plane 1.
- Reference Object shows the mesh or point cloud against which the feature will be refined. Here, the reference object is the mesh from which the features were created.
- Distance Limit sets the maximum distance from the reference model to the feature within which geometry can be considered during refinement. The default is 0.1 mm.
- Normal Tolerance sets the maximum allowed angle between the normal of the reference model and the normal of the feature. The default is 30°. For a point cloud, this field is shown only when the cloud has normals.
- Max Iterations specifies the maximum number of refinement iterations performed while MeshInspector searches for a stable set of points. The default is 10, the maximum 100.
- Refine starts the operation using the selected feature, reference object, and settings.
After clicking Refine, MeshInspector adjusts the selected feature so that it better matches suitable geometry on the reference object. In this example, Plane 1 was refined against the mesh using a Distance Limit of 30 mm, a Normal Tolerance of 30°, and up to 10 iterations.
With these settings, MeshInspector searches for mesh geometry within the specified distance whose surface normals are sufficiently close to the plane orientation, and iteratively updates the feature based on the matching geometry. As a result, Plane 1 changes both its position and orientation and becomes aligned with a planar surface of the reference mesh.
The change can also be seen in the Information panel. After refinement, the plane has a normal of approximately (-1, 0, 0), showing that its orientation has been updated to match the detected surface.
If further adjustment is needed, you can continue refining the same feature. Modify the Distance Limit, Normal Tolerance, or Max Iterations settings and click Refine again. MeshInspector will perform another refinement operation using the updated parameters.
If Refine Fails
If too few points of the reference object are close enough to the feature, refinement stops with the message Unable to refine. Number of selected verts (…) less than minimal (…) for this feature type. The minimum is 1 point for a point, 2 for a line, 3 for a plane or a circle, 4 for a sphere, 6 for a cylinder and 7 for a cone. Increase Distance Limit or Normal Tolerance and click Refine again. If the feature moves to a wrong surface, lower Distance Limit so that only the surface you want is within reach, or press Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on macOS) to undo the refinement.
