Autodesk Mudbox 2013 SDK Documentation > Mesh and Topology > Level of Detail (LOD) >

# Mesh Division

The MeshGrid class is an interface for plug-ins that divide the surface of a mesh into grids. A grid is a collection of quad faces over the surface in a grid pattern with the size of 1x1, 2x2, 4x4, 8x8, etc.

The MeshGrid class is responsible to supply a list of grids on the surface with the following rules:

1. The grids should be disjoint: one face can only belong to one grid and no more.
2. These grids should cover the whole surface.

A MeshGrid is used by Mudbox when it is rendering meshes with high polygon counts using level of detail. A MeshGrid is always created as the child of the Mesh object, so it can obtain a pointer to the mesh by calling TreeNode::Parent().

If you need to control the algorithm by which these grids are created, you can override this class in a plug-in, and replace Mudbox's version, which is in the plug-in called "MeshGrid":

1. Write a plug-in that defines your own class derived from MeshGrid.
2. Delete the existing MeshGrid plug-in, and copy yours into the plug-in folder. On OSX, this plug-in is found in the Mudbox package, under Contents > MacOS > plugins. On Windows, it is found in the folder, under work\plugins.