Script To Find And Delete Overlapping Duplicate Poly Meshes?

[georgep1]

I have an extremely complex scene made up of a large number of poly meshes. The problem is that a lot (but not all) of the poly meshes have an exact duplicate (or a number of duplicates) overlapping them.
I need a mel script that will sort through my geometry and either select, or delete all of the duplicates so that only 1 remains of each poly mesh. Does anyone know of any mel scripts that will do this? Or can anyone give me pointers on how to write a script that will do this? I have basically no experience in scripting so please dumb down your answers as much as possible.

note: I tried the method of combining all of the meshes in the scene and then merging the vertices and then running a cleanup, but the problem with this method was that after I ran the cleanup, I needed to separate the meshes again, and when I did this, the duplicate meshes returned

[joojaa]

Optimize mesh does search for lamina faces like this.

[georgep1]

where is this optimize mesh option? I am using maya 2008 and I cant find it anywhere

[joojaa]

oh sorry its calle cleanup. but it does only work for turly lamina faces.

[georgep1]

yes, this way usually does work, but I need a method of finding the overlapping poly meshes without having to first combine all the meshes and then merge all of my vertices.

The reason for this is because once I have done this and cleaned up my poly mesh, its too complex of a mesh to separate, and it crashes my computer every time.

This is why I was wondering if there was a script that would detect separate overlapping poly meshes without having to combine them in order to do so.

[joojaa]

QUOTE(georgep1 @ 01/27/08, 05:04 AM) [snapback]280194[/snapback]
This is why I was wondering if there was a script that would detect separate overlapping poly meshes without having to combine them in order to do so.

Its even more complex than the issue that crashes you!

[georgep1]

hahaha well in that case is there some sort of workaround or way to do this without crashing my computer?

[joojaa]

Well... it depends on how industrious you want to be. Id run it all up to a tree of somekind sorted according to their normal equation.But some exsist free dfor download if one searches.

But yes describe more do you want to remove duplicate faces OR partial duplicate faces (where they overlap but dont share vertices)?

Anyway divide and conquer!So do them one small piece at time then cleanup separate and then move to next combo. You can use BB to determine what is plausible to test against each other.

[georgep1]

well, I dont think there are any partial overlapping meshes. so basically I want to remove the meshes that share all vertices.

I searched the downloads section of this website but didnt find anything that appeared to be what I needed....if anyone knows of any downloads that I missed in my search that might help me, please tell.

QUOTE
You can use BB to determine what is plausible to test against each other.

can you please expand on this. Im assuming you are referring to BB Code, which I thought was used for making text bold or underlined, etc. How would this help me?

[isam]

I believe what he joojaa meant about the BB is the bounding box, so to see if the objects share a bounding box, then try to test them, otherwise drop the object, to lessen the calculations

[georgep1]

hahahaha yea that makes a lot more sense