Explode

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Explode

The Explode command breaks objects down into components.

Steps

Select objects.

Command-line options

TangentComponents

When exploding a polysurface, surfaces connected with tangent or higher continuity remain joined.

AngleTolerance

Adjacent surfaces that are not exactly tangent but differ by less than the specified angle will be treated as tangent.

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 strings.

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 strings.