Small Faces

Description

A small face is a polygon whose longest dimension (bounding box extent) is below the tolerance threshold.

These faces are almost always modelling artifacts or unintended slivers, as acoustic wave-based solvers degrade with faces much smaller than the wavelength of interest.

Detection

Detection Method: Bounding-box max-dimension check

Tolerance: 0.10 m (10 cm) — absolute, scale-independent

The pipeline checks each face’s maximum extent in any direction (x, y, or z):

This catches any face whose bounding box fits within a 10 cm cube, regardless of actual area.

Auto-Repair

Status: ❌ No automatic repair

Action: Detection and reporting only

Manual Fix / Avoidance

In 3D Modelling tools (Before Export):

1. Remove or merge: - Delete small faces if they’re artifacts - Merge with neighboring faces (if topology allows)