Optimize tidies up how a mesh or a point cloud is stored in memory. It removes empty space, for example the space left by deleted parts, and reorders the elements so that elements that are close in space are also close in memory. The model itself does not change: you see the same shape with the same number of vertices and triangles.
Optimize an object
- Select one or more meshes or point clouds in the Scene tree.
- Click Mesh Edit › Optimize. For point clouds, the same button is on the Points tab.
The tool works at once, without a panel. Run it after edits that delete or rebuild large parts of a model, before you save the model or start a heavy operation. To go back, use Undo (Ctrl+Z, or Cmd+Z on macOS).
What changes and what does not
| Changes | Does not change |
|---|---|
| The memory the object takes | The shape, the area and the volume |
| The order and the numbers (IDs) of vertices, triangles and edges | The number of vertices, triangles and edges |
| Colors, UV coordinates and selected triangles or edges, which are moved to the new order |
Because the IDs change, a vertex or triangle you noted in Mesh Info before Optimize has a different ID after it.
To see the effect, open Inspect › Object Info and compare the mem line before and after. For this rocker arm, opened from an OBJ file, Optimize reduced the memory from 1.23 Mb to 1.15 Mb and removed the spare edge capacity (edges: 30132 / 32768 capacity became edges: 30132). The numbers of vertices and triangles, the area and the volume stayed the same:
The panels with the counts are described in Mesh Info, Points Info and Object Info. To make a mesh lighter by changing its geometry, use a tool that reduces the number of triangles instead; Optimize never removes triangles.
