Validation Settings

This is the number of warnings that you deem as acceptable to pass tests, it's your acceptable number of warnings.

• The Validation system attempts to make volumes with this warning count or less.

• The Rebuild Failed Depots system will delete and rebuild volumes when it detects more than this number of warnings.

Warnings are locations on geometry that the volume isn't covering. They may not be problems, depending on the context, but certainly a lot of warnings likely indicate problems.

This is the number of errors that you deem as acceptable to pass tests, it's your acceptable number of errors.

• The Validation system attempts to make volumes with this error count or less.

• The Rebuild Failed Depots system will delete and rebuild volumes when it detects more than this number of errors.

Errors are locations not colliding with anything that the volume isn't covering. As errors are in open space, they are much more likely to be problematic and should be acted on.

The Validation system rebuilds volumes once thresholds are breached. The Validation Stratgey determines how the system attempts to improve volumes. Broadly speaking, volume issues are usually related to the size/shape or the resolution not being optimal, so strategies target these issues.

The strategies are:

• Expand Entire Volume - incrementally increases the size of the volume by increasing the Expand Volume setting with each attempt. The idea being that by making the volume larger, it will extend outward to encapsulate the areas it was previously missing. This strategy works great to cover curved areas that are causing warnings due to the volume being simplified enough to not match the curves. As it expands the entire volume it mostly retains the shapes of the original volume, however it will be expanding areas that don't necessarily need expanding, as it's a uniform expansion.

• Expand Warning Areas - incrementally expands the points near warning locations only. This is a targeted expansion, focused only on areas with issues. It works well to fix issues only where needed, in cases where you have very thin walls and need to be careful with bleed into adjacent rooms. However, the shape of the volume will change and as the number of attempts increases it could cause odd shapes that cause different problems, especially with bleed into other areas. If the cause of the problems isn't size/shape related, this strategy will likely only make things worse.

• Resolution Adder - rather than increase the shape, this adjusts the Resolution setting by alternating between adding and subtracting small amounts to the Resolution setting, e.g. +1, then -1, then +2, then -2, then +3, etc. While these small adjustments will not fix cases where the Resolution requires a vastly different value, they can ensure the optimal Resolution value is used in the ballpark of your current value. As this adjusts Resolution only, it obviously can't do a good job of fixing size issues, where the volume just isn't big enough.

• Resolution Multiplier - like the Resolution Adder, this incrementally adjusts the Resolution setting, but by multiples and typically larger amounts, e.g. +10%, -10%, +20%, -20%, etc. This means it scales well with higher Resolution amounts, and can fix cases where the resolution is far off optimal. While you're more likely to get a better volume, it means the complexity of the volume will likely be far off what you've currently specified with the Resolution setting. As this adjusts Resolution only, it obviously can't do a good job of fixing size issues, where the volume just isn't big enough.

• Try All Strategies - with each attempt, this will cycle through each of the main strategies, once it's attempted all of them it'll cycle back to the start and increase the aggressiveness just like the standalone strategies do. Obviously this is a great strategy when you do not know what is best, the only downside is that, as it goes through all the strategies, it'll take longer (more attempts) to get to the iteration that passes than if you'd just chosen that specific strategy. It's worth considering increasing the Max Attempts when using this strategy

• Voxels On Issues - Voxels (large blocks) are added to any warnings or errors that are detected. This mode is effectively a blend of perimeter and voxel generation modes, where voxels are used on problem areas. Only 1 attempt is ever carried out as this strategy directly resolves detected issues and it always results in 0 warnings and errors (unless the volume is seriously broken). The downside is that it changes the shape, potentially bleeds in to adjacent areas and increases triangle count.  Voxel size is determined by Resolution.

If using a Voxel Generation Mode ( in Generation settings), the Validation system works differently, instead trying to reduce the number of voxels used. Therefore the strategy has no affect on voxel volumes as it uses an alternative validation system not based on warnings/errors (as there are none for voxel volumes). Check out the Validation page for more info.

The maximum number of attempts the Validation system should use before it gives up and picks the best of the bunch. 

If a validation attempt creates a volume at the warning/error threshold or below, then it stops early, so you wont have to wait until all attempts are carried out if it's created a good volume

It's often not a great idea to make this too high, as after a certain point it's likely that the volume output will be some sort of mutant volume that's shaped weird anyway, even if it somehow passes tests. The exception to this is the Try All Strategies, which benefits from higher Max Attempts as it has to cycle through all the strategies, requiring more attempts to get the same result.

Used by the 'Rebuild Failed Depots' system. If a depot has a volume and the depot is run, it's tested for warnings/errors and if it breaches the thresholds discussed above, it volume gets deleted and a new drone is sent out to build a new volume. This setting determines if the new replacement volume should use the same settings as the previous volume, or if it should use the current settings in the Volumator widget.

You may have perfectly tailored the settings of the depot's volume; getting the resolution, expand, etc settings just right for the space. With this bool enabled, all Detection and Generation settings are remembered and applied to the new volume. Usually you'd want this to ensure you don't lose any 'work' done. 

However, if you've used bad settings on a volume such as a really high resolution amount, then the depot could continually fail as it's being asked to rebuild the volume using the same bad settings each time it fails and rebuilds. So by disabling this bool, you can use current settings for rebuilds. It's usually not necessary but having this setting aids visibiltiy into what's happening and gives you the option to override if it doesn't suit your preferences.

Also, with this bool enabled, if you want to update settings used on a depot/volume, simply Regenerating the volume with your chosen settings with update it's settings.