Building the Surface - Smoothing Page of the Patch Options Dialog

Figure 3:107 Smoothing Page of the Patch Options Dialog

This gives the user control over the smoothing function, which is used to define the shape of each individual patch. If used in conjunction with data points (see Building the Surface - Data Points Page of the Patch Options Dialog), the smoothing function applies a smoothing influence on the way a patch approximates its sampled data. If no data points are used, the smoothing function determines the internal shape of a patch based entirely on the shape of its boundaries. Different smoothing functions do this in different ways, thereby producing different shaped patches. The behaviour of the functions can also be controlled using variable parameters. If Automatic smoothing function parameters is checked, the values of these are automatically calculated for each patch, depending on the shape of its boundaries. Unchecking this box allows the user to specify values. The interpretation of each parameter depends on the particular smoothing function that is selected.

The Smoothing function box allows the user to select a smoothing function. These are described below.