How does Automatic Surface Merge work?

Geomagic Studio has always had the ability to merge selected surface patches into a single patch. This simple feature greatly reduced the number of surface patches saved out in the IGES or STEP file, which made manipulation in CAD mush easier since you had fewer surfaces to deal with. Accuracy was not affected since the number of control points remained the same. However, this command required the user to tediously select arrays of patches, with certain exceptions, like the array could not abut low- or high-degree corners.

In Studio 12, a new feature was added which automatically merges as many patches as possible with a single click! Located in the Exact Surfaces > Surfaces tab group, this new feature is called Merge Surfaces (Automatic).

In addition, this feature was added as an optional post-process to AutoSurface. One caveat, however, is you must use Constant, not Adaptive, control point layout in surface fitting.

Before Automatic Merging (96 patches)	After Automatic Merging (4 patches)