# Plate Insets The **Plate Insets** operator is another greeble randomizer but is originally used by [**Random Starship**](https://www.blenderguppy.com/add-ons/random-flow) to produce the ship's plating details. This was included in the add-on so users can take advantage of the **Random Starship** panel generator even without owning the add-on.

Figure 1

It is desctructive meaning the source mesh will be altered by the operation. Here are the redo properties and what they do: ### Subdivision Increases the resolution of the base mesh so the random greebles can have more faces to work with. Essentially, more faces means more detail.

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### Plating Seed Randomizes the plating details using a seed number.

Figure 3

### Smooth Smooths the source mesh.

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### Plates The number of possible plating details to generate. The greeble pattern somewhat resembles the radial solver in Random Panels but is controlled and made differently.

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{% hint style="info" %} *If the number of plates have reached the maximum possible amount based on the **Size** and **Adjacent Faces** properties then it will no longer add new ones.* {% endhint %} ### Size This comprises of the min/max properties. This determines the size of the plate detail with lower values resulting to smaller details and higher values to larger details.

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### Tolerance Normal threshold value which determines if plate details will expand or wrap over to faces connected to sharp angled edges.

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### Adjacent Faces This has two options: **Clear** and **Fill**. **Clear** will generate more relaxed areas when creating the plate details while **Fill** will try and fill every space with plating details if possible.

Figure 8

### Even Offset Turns on or off even offset when extruding the plate details using the **Depth** property. Having this on ensures the extruded faces maintain a similar area. If you encounter geometry spikes, disable this option to resolve the issue.

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### Thickness This determines the thickness or scale of the plate details. You can toggle the chain icon to get this value to randomize between the mix/max properties.

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### Depth This determines the depth or extrusion distance of the plate details. You can toggle the chain icon to get this value to randomize between the mix/max properties.

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### Height Seed Randomizes depth using a seed number.

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### Inner Margin This has two options: **All** and **Indent Only**. **All** will add margins to all plating detail while **Indent Only** will create margins to indented plate details only.

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### Margins This has two properties: **Outer** and **Inner**. **Outer** creates margin from the boundary edges of the selected faces, this will not generate results if the selection is the entire mesh. **Inner** creates margin from the boundary of every plate detail.

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### Reverse Percentage value to reverse the depth value of every plate detail.

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### Reverse Seed Randomizes the effect of the **Reverse** property using the seed number.

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### Triangulate Determines how much of the faces in the selection will be randomized based on a percentage value.

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### Limit Smooth This has three options: None, Base and Top. None will follow the smooth shading of the source mesh, Base will mark sharp the bottom edges of the plate detail and Top will mark sharp the top edges of the plate detail.

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### Use Mirror Turning this off will use the entire source mesh instead of the mirrored version with the advantage of generating an entire plating detail in the symmetry lines.

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{% hint style="info" %} *For some random operators, disabling the Use Mirror toggle lets you generate random details for a complete non-mirrored mesh while for some like **Plate Insets** it creates a different effect entirely.* {% endhint %} ### Clip Center Clips the center vertices together in the x, y and z toggle using the distance threshold. This is used to merge the border edges of the plate details together in the symmetry lines removing the split detail there. You enable/disable this effect on a particular axis using the x, y and z toggles and control how much of the vertices beyond the symmetry lines are affected using the distance property.

Figure 20

### Limited Dissolve This uses limited dissolve on the source mesh which is primarily used to get rid of subdivision banding on cylindrical or organic surfaces.

Figure 21

You can, of course, use this to just lower the resolution of the resulting mesh. ### Max Angle The maximum angle threshold for the limited dissolve property. Lower values preserves more form and shape of the resulting mesh.