About Construction History

As you build objects in Maya, the software stores information about the tools, options, and geometry used to create them. This information is referred to as the object's construction history, and it can be found under the Inputs heading in the Channel Box (Figure 3.69). As you've seen throughout this chapter, you can make changes to the construction history to modify the final object's shape.

Figure 3.69. An object's construction history can be used to modify the object.

Construction history can be very useful when you want to tweak a surface without having to rebuild it. However, using construction history requires some extra processing power, which can become significant for complex objects. If you're certain that you won't need to change an object's construction history, you can delete it. You can also turn off this feature; doing so causes all new objects to be created without construction history but doesn't affect existing objects.

To turn the construction history off or on:

• Click the Construction History On/Off icon in the status bar. is on, and is off.
  
  

To delete an object's construction history:

1.	Select the object whose construction history you want to delete. If there are no objects in your scene, you can create one by select Create > NURBS Primitives > Sphere.
2.	Choose Edit > Delete by Type > History (Figure 3.70). Figure 3.70. For complex objects, deleting the construction history can improve manipulation speed.