-First off NO Uniform does not mean isoparms are equadistant. Best explaination I can offer as to what it is and realy what it's for is texture placement and surface alignment/ tangency -attachment... -When you rebuild a surface to uniform your basicaly assigning each isoparm point a number and a location. EX: you create a 7 span curv uniform 0 to number of spans.. Each edit point starting at the begining will be order, 0.0, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0 as there position on the curve -same principle on a surface. Where as something like cord length would have some thing like 0.0, 3.321, 6.562, 10.313, etc. etc.
-The difference is if you attach two surfaces that have are uniform it lines isoparm point 0.0 to 0.0, and 1.0 to 1.0, and 2.0 to 2.0 etc .etc. If you attach two cord length or a uniform and a cord length the new surface would have a kindof of double parmameterization and a surface with possible twice as many isoparms when attached. Ex if surface A is 4 spans unfiform it's points are 0.0,1.0,2.0,3.0,4.0 then your going to attach it to a cord length surface which has 4 spans but there placement is something like, 0.0,3.543,5.523,9.324,12.768- the surface you end up with depending on which surface was selected first a 7,or 8 spans across where seperately they were each 4. its edit points will look something like- 0.0,1.0,2.0,3.0,3.543,4.0,5.523,9.324,12.768...
-in which case you could then rebuild to uniform specifying how many Isoparms in that direction you want say 4 and it would take out the extra isoparms and basicaly re-format the surface you could say... In the event of unifor 0 to 1 your surface points will be 0.0 for the first and 1.0 for the last where as every surface point inbetween will be equal distance as far as parameterization not isoparm placement...
ex 4 span curve 0 to 1= 0.0,.25,.5,.75,1.0...
-Often when building a surface at uniform by pluging in the same number of u and v will shift the isoparms, but that is when it feels the surface would maintain better with more here and less there, also using reduce can do the same thing.
-BUT when you have a surface much like yours it is fairly clean and even when rebuilding not much happens because the isoparms are already in a decent spot... Now I don't know what the seperated surfaces were when you attached them but this surface is clean, what are you trying to acomplish- are you trying to line it up with another surface, stitch it-what?? -using reduce on a surface sometimes will redistribute the isoparms, but in all cases it looks at the original surface, it's curveiture/ curve tolerance and decides based on that how many and where the isoparms should be to maintain a close as possible shape to the original- in the case of this perticular surface I downloaded form you reduce does nothing because it feels it won't do much for it, though you could rebuild the v to like 14 or 16 and it will closely maintain the shape.. As far as having isoparms evenly distributed /spaced equilateral on the surface the end surface wouldn't be the same shape in your case, on flat or surfaces that don't have alot of curvature or heavy curveture in any spots will redistribute the isoparms fairly evenly when rebuilding, but in your case, which you may have already done after you attached them is rebuilt it and it shifted the isoparms to the area that needed greater detail, so the object is have the surfaces uniform to begin with when attaching to keep it alignable with anything else...
-I could e-mail your file back, but it wouldn't help you plus I don't have your email, the surface I have is identicle to what I downloaded but parameterized 0 to # of spans. If you wanted to get a more evenly distributed look from this surface you can extract isoparms like had been suggested just drag and select anywhere on the surface doesn't have to be in the spot of an existing one- this way if you want to try and line it up with another surface to attach or stitch to you can place them with it next to it then loft, then select the surface go to rebuild surfaces and rebuild to uniform 0 to 1 or #of spans your choice, you'll want it to be the same as a surface your aligning it to if thats the case, and click the keep CV's box and rebuild in both direction, this will keep cv's from shifting when originaly rebuilding just to get surface parmameterization...
I apologize for the book, but I hope it helps you understand how it works... -if you have any specifics, or problems let me know- but you can't just rebuild a curved surface and hope it will evenly displace the isoparms "sorry"
sid
sid69graphic@yahoo.com
"-if it wasn't for '"Y, we wouldn't be..."
