Remove floating pieces

A part is usually one piece: all its triangles hang together. A CAD export, or a hole that was closed, can leave small loose pieces next to it that belong to the same part. The plug a hole was cut with, a shaving, a dot of a thread. These floating pieces touch nothing. Nobody sees them, and they still cost triangles. Remove floating pieces deletes them.

When to use it

After you open a CAD file, or after Remove holes, when a part still has specks beside it or inside a hole that was closed. It is a clean-up, so run it before you reduce triangles.

Steps

1. Select the parts to work on. With nothing selected, it works on every visible part.
2. Open the card Quick fixes in the right sidebar and press Remove floating pieces…. Or press CtrlK and type floating. The panel opens at the bottom left of the viewport.
3. Set Piece size up to to the longest loose piece you want removed, in millimetres. It starts at 5.
4. Press Remove, or Enter.
5. A message says how many floating pieces were removed, from how many parts, and how many triangles that took away.

The two fields

Piece size up to

A loose piece is removed if its longest side is no more than this. 5 mm to begin with.

Keep if over

A loose piece with more triangles than this is kept, however small it is. It starts at 0, which switches it off: the number of triangles does not matter.

What always stays

• The biggest piece of each part, whatever its size. A part is never emptied.
• Every loose piece that is longer than the limit.
• Every loose piece that has more triangles than Keep if over allows, when that field is above 0.

Undo

A whole run is one undo step. Press CtrlZ and every piece is back.