Explode

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Explode

The Explode command breaks objects down into components.

Steps

  • Select objects.

Explode results

Explode breaks down objects as follows:

Object Result

Blocks

Explodes blocks into component curves, surfaces, meshes, text, blocks, etc.

When linked blocks are exploded, a layer tree for the objects is created.

Dimensions

Curves and text.

Groups

Explodes objects contained in the group, but leaves the objects grouped.

Hatch

Single segment lines and planar surfaces.

Mesh

Mesh parts and mesh faces based on unwelded edges. If a mesh is completely unwelded, then it will explode to its individual faces. (Unweld > 0 degrees).

Note

  • When Rhino creates a seamless (closed) mesh from a complex closed polysurface NURBS object, the resulting mesh, when exported, can make a mesh that is too large to be imported into other programs. The simple meshes that result from exploding the joined mesh may be small enough.
  • Completely unwelded meshes such as imported *.stl files will explode into individual mesh faces, resulting in a separate mesh in the current file for each mesh face. The overhead required for this can greatly increase the amount of memory used and potentially crash. Welding a mesh completely (Weld command, 180 degrees) then unwelding (Unweld command) at some reasonable angle such as 20-30 degrees may allow the mesh to explode into a more manageable number of meshes containing multiple polygon faces.

Cage controls

Curves, surfaces, cages.

Polysurface

Surfaces. Sub-surface material assignment will be retained.

Polycurve

Single segment curves.

Polyline

Single segment lines/curves.

Text

Curves.

Textfields in blocks

Static text stings.

ExplodeBlock

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Block

Edit

Blocks

Explode Block

The ExplodeBlock command reduces blocks into component objects (including any nested blocks).

Steps

Command-line options

AllBlocks

Explodes all of the blocks in the file.

GroupOutput

Groups the resulting objects.

 

See also

Split and trim curves and surfaces