Edit Modifiers and Editable Objects

To achieve highly detailed modeling effects, you can directly transform, modify, and align the geometry of objects at a sub-object level, using the Modify panel. The following table shows the different object types and their respective sub-objects.

Object Type	Sub-Object Geometry
Meshes	Vertex, Edge, Face, Polygon, Element
Splines	Vertex, Segment, Spline
Patches	Vertex, Edge, Patch, Element
NURBS Curves	Curve CV or Point, Curve
NURBS Surfaces	Surface CV or Point, Surface

With the exception of NURBS, to gain access to an object's sub-objects, in most cases you must first either convert the object into an editable object, or apply any of various modifiers to the object, such as Edit Mesh/Spline/Patch or Mesh/Spline Select. The Select modifiers simply let you specify sub-objects for modification by subsequently applied modifiers. The distinctions between transforming an object into an editable object and applying an Edit modifier to it are as follows:

Method	Advantage	Disadvantage
Editable object	More efficient Can animate sub-objects	Lose creation parameters
Edit modifier	Keep creation parameters	Less efficient Cannot animate sub-objects

To convert a parametric object to an editable object, see any of the following topics:

To apply an Edit modifier, see any of the following topics:

Edit Mesh Modifier

Edit Spline Modifier

Edit Patch Modifier

To apply a Select modifier, see the following topics:

Mesh Select Modifier

Poly Select Modifier

Spline Select Modifier

Volume Select Modifier

Patch Select Modifier