Detect N-gons in Maya using MEL

I learned something really interesting today and I just had to share it.

I'm not much of an organic modeler, but sometimes I have to get my hands dirty. Someone asked something that I've been wondering for a while. Is there a way to select ngons, or polygons with more than 5 or more sides. Someone else responded with the following MEL script:

polySelectConstraint -mode 3 -type 0x0008 -size 3;
polySelectConstraint -disable;

After selecting your mesh, run this. All of your 5+ sided faces will be selected. Now you can do with them what you will...

If you're new to MEL like I am, this can look like a string of nonsense, but it's really pretty simple. Let's take a second and dissect this:

polySelectConstraint - "By using the polySelectConstraint command you can select connected components, components within a shell, or components on open borders." -source

-mode 3 - Mode 3 is "all and next", in other words it selects everything meeting the requirement of the constraint. But what is the requirement of the constraint? That's defined next.

-type 0x0008 - type 0x0008 is face. So the type of your selection will be a face, not an edge or vertex.

-size 3 - size 3 is nsided. (fyi, 0 is off, 1 is triangles and 2 is quads)

So the first line of this simple script is plainly read as "Create a polySelectConstraint for every face that is nsided". The second line is read, "disable the constraint". Once you have your selection, there's no need to keep it enabled.

Pretty useful, huh?

~Melissa