Clean up vertices/edges with no faces

Question

Is there anyway to cleanup vertices/edges in edit mode?

I have been deleting some faces from a mesh but it seems to create a few loose vertices/edges.

Update for clarity:

So I have a mesh like this:

enter image description here

And I delete some parts of it and end up with some edges/vertices that do not have any faces:

enter image description here

Can I automatically select and/or remove those?

Can you please be more specific? What is the situation you encounter which needs to clean vertices? What do you expect by cleaning it? You can take a look at this question — Polosson, Jan 12 '14 at 01:01
Please add some screenshots and more detail to your question. As it is now, it's a little hard you know exactly what you're asking. (BTW, try Ctrl+Alt+Shift+M to select non-manifold geometry) — gandalf3, Jan 12 '14 at 03:06

score 30 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 12 '14 at 06:49

30

The first tool that will help you cleanup your mesh is Select Loose Geometry which is available in the select menu in edit mode. This will select any vertices that are not connected to anything. Once selected you can simply delete these vertices.

enter image description here

The other one that can help is Select Similar. Start by de-selecting all vertices, then select one vertex that has a single connected edge and press ShiftG (also available in the select menu) and choose Amount of connecting edges. This will select all vertices that have one edge connected to them allowing you to delete these vertices. Repeat for any similar situations that you may want to cleanup.

enter image description here

answered Jan 12 '14 at 06:49

sambler

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+1 Good answer :) Another thing you could try is selecting the main mesh with Ctrl+L and then inverting the selection (Ctrl+I). – gandalf3 Jan 12 '14 at 20:40
Select Similar just changed my life, thank you! – Keller G Oct 16 '16 at 23:47
Super cool feature, unbelievable how convenient/perfect this trick was to solve this problem. – Joseph Farah Nov 19 '22 at 05:02

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 04 '14 at 09:48

Something which will similarly help you find pieces of your mesh that aren't quite right is the "Select Non-Manifold" CTRL+SHIFT+ALT+M - this will show you when you have too many faces connecting to a single edge, and it will show you when you have too few faces connected to an edge.

One note on this, however, is if you cut your model in half and put a Mirror Modifier on it to keep it perfectly symmetrical, it will find the entire cut as non-manifold until you apply the modifier.

score 5 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 08 '16 at 08:46

5

In Edit mode choose Face Select mode, select all with A and hide faces (H). Then choose Edge select mode, select all and delete. That should work for loose vertices.

edited Jul 08 '16 at 08:46

Mr Zak

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answered Jul 08 '16 at 08:32

user27346

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 04 '14 at 17:52

If you find deletion of geometry routinely leaves remaining artifacts (vertices, edges or even faces) you might want to adopt the custom of always removing doubles before deleting. Undoing extrusions can also create these bits of rogue geometry. This happens when the next operation after an extrusion is reversed by undoing it, but the extrusion itself is not removed, so

Clean up vertices/edges with no faces

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