Welding verticles on a spline?

[pandemonium]

i'm new to this forum so i just want to say its great, from what ive seen, and the site is just awesome

im new to max, so i'm going through the tutorials in the program. i'm making a knight for a chess set, using the surface modifier, and i cant weld the verticles of two lines(on the same spline) even when they are very close. i tried maxing out the weld distance and it just wont work
any ideas?
(connecting a new line from the middle of an exsisting one is wrong? cause i cant do that either)
thanks in advance

[mikedin]

vertices of splines and spline segments can only be welded at the end of the splines. Can't have a Y shaped spline where the middle is welded to 3 branches.

Sometimes your not able to weld vertices of splines because of several reasons. But most likely the reason is because you have duplicate (segments or splines atop eachother. Try deleting one spline or offending segment to clean up your line work.

If you post a snapshot of your splines it would help everyoen here; help you in this case.

Good luck,

[pandemonium]

oh.... now i get it... thanks for your help
heres a small snapshot:

[mikedin]

Yep, that will definately not weld!

Most Bezier based packages (I think all of them) disallow Y junctions. In MAX you can snap those points together without them actually being welded wich incidenteally is how a spline cage is built from which you can create 3 and 4 sided "patch" surfaces that will use vertice junctions for it's border vertices/edges.

In other words you can't have Y junctions when creating shapes but you most definately can with 'surfaces' being polygon, sub-d, Nurbs, and MAX patch surfaces.

For more info on what I'm talking about, look up the modifiers "cross section" and "surface" both are used to create a spline cage and the second to create bezier surface patches from the spline cage

Good luck,

[pandemonium]

man i feel like such a noob.. my teacher will kill me :

i wanted to use the surface modifier, but i thought that every verticle needs to be welded - i mean not snapped, but just one verticle in every junction... will the surface modifier work with snapped verticles?

thanks again for all your help

[mikedin]

Yes, that is how it forms the patch. Based on "coincident" vertices....

Keep in mind that the tangency of the spline vertices will determine the tangency of the patch surface. In other words if there all corner vertices the resulting patch is "faceted" or hard, if all bezier or smooth then the patch will follow that conformity as well.

[pandemonium]

k
i think i got it
i'll try using the surface modifier, and i'll post the questions here if i'll have any. thanks