How does the Smooth Components tool work in VCarve Pro and Aspire, and when should I use it vs the Sculpting smooth brush?

Overview

Smooth Components applies a general smoothing filter over a whole 3D component in one operation, averaging its surface heights. It reduces pixel-scale noise, jagged bitmap artifacts, faceting and harsh transitions while keeping the overall shape. It is the digital equivalent of sanding a rough carving. Unlike the Sculpting tool's Smooth brush, which is localized to where you paint, Smooth Components is the right tool when you need to clean up a component-wide issue instead of fixing one specific area.

How to Use It

1. Select the component(s) to smooth in the Component Tree or by clicking their grayscale in the 2D view.
2. Click the Apply smoothing filter to selected components icon on the Modeling tab (or choose Smooth Selected Components from the Model menu).
3. The software takes a few seconds to prepare the model for smoothing (progress bar at the bottom of the screen).
4. The form appears with the Smoothing slider at its default of 50%.
5. Drag the slider to adjust. The 3D view updates in real time.
6. If the Max setting is not enough, click Bake Current Smoothing. This bakes the current smoothing value into the component and resets the slider, so you can apply another pass on top.
7. Click Close when done.

Important: if you select a new component without clicking Bake Current Smoothing, the smoothing on the previous component is lost. Always bake before switching components.

Working view tip: tile the 2D and 3D views (Tile Windows, or Page Up and Page Down) while smoothing. The 2D view shows the selected component and the 3D view shows the smoothing result in real time.

Preserve Transparency Option

When checked: smoothing stays on the existing 3D areas of the selected shapes. Edges are not smoothed into the surrounding background, so the component's footprint stays sharply defined. Leave it ticked for clipart and imported models unless you want the edges blurred.

When unchecked: all the edges of the modeled area are smoothed into the background, blurring the component's silhouette. Use this when you intentionally want gradual edge transitions.

Multi-Pass Smoothing

For heavily noisy components (low-resolution bitmap imports, rough STL imports, aggressive sculpting results), one pass at Max may not be enough. Use the bake and repeat cycle:

1. Drag the slider to Max (or the strength you want).
2. Click Bake Current Smoothing to commit the pass.
3. The slider resets.
4. Adjust again.
5. Repeat until the surface is smooth enough.

Each bake is permanent, so check the result carefully before adding another pass. Over-smoothing can destroy fine detail, and several light passes give more control than one heavy one.

Multi-Component Smoothing

If you select multiple components or a component group, the software bakes them into a single component first before smoothing. Make a safe copy (duplicate the components or save the file) before running Smooth Components on multiple selections.

To smooth individual components by different amounts: select one, set the slider, click Bake Current Smoothing, then select the next. When you pick a new component the software may take a few seconds and applies the default 50% strength to it.

When to Use Smooth Components

• After creating a component from a bitmap (Aspire): grayscale images often produce stair-stepping or blocky artifacts in the model surface.
• After importing an STL with mesh noise: 3D-scanned or low-poly STL files often have visible faceting.
• After aggressive sculpting (Aspire): high-strength Deposit and Remove strokes can leave ridges, spikes or harsh transitions.
• For a hand-carved look: light smoothing on a programmatically generated component (like a Create Shape result) softens the mathematical perfection.

Smoothing cannot recover detail that was never captured, so it is not a substitute for the right job resolution. Do not use it where the toolpath needs sharp, vector-defined edges.

Smoothing Strength Reference (starting points to test)

The software does not publish recommended strengths. These are common starting points, so preview before you commit and test on scrap.

Smooth Components vs Sculpting Smooth Brush

For the full list of Sculpting tools, see the entry on all the Sculpting tools in Aspire.