An understanding of the historical background to surface fairing can help you produce fair surfaces in Maxsurf.

Maxsurf has tools to visualise (un)fairness:

§   Curvature porcupines, curvature on one or more curves

§   Compress, especially useful for long slender hulls

§   Rendering, longitudinal and transverse surface curvature

Fairing is mostly a manual process and Maxsurf has tools to help you do that:

§   Straighten

§   Smooth

§   More… these are discussed not discussed in this training manual.

There are several modelling guidelines that will help you achieve a fairer design. Most importantly:

§   Use the stiffest surface and the minimum number of control points that allows you to achieve the desired shape.

§   The surface is always fairer than the control point net, so make sure your control point net is nice and regularly and fair.

You have completed the chapter about fairing. Next you will learn about Chapter 7 Modelling Discontinuities.