Not sure if this is just the way Blender is or if its a video card issue but when I display an item in object mode in the 3D window I don't see all the edges/faces of the object although when I switch to edit mode everything is there and all vertices/edges/faces can be selected. I'm not sure it really matters since I can see the outline of the object ....it would just be nice to see all of the wireframe/mesh too.

You can see in the image I've attached where one set of verticies/edges shows up in object mode where I have extruded. (Circled) Not sure if I did something different with the extrude command here or not, I've tried to duplicate this but no luck.

This system has an Intel Extreme Graphics 8245G/GL/GE/PE/GV graphics controller. (That's the vid card right? Sorry...not much into hardware specs until something doesn't work.)

Thanks,

John

Not totally sure how to get what you want, but what you did in that particular place is extrude once, then you didn't move the new vertices at all and extruded again.  If you look closely in edit mode (face select only, like you have in the image) you'll see 4 little squares on each of those edges.  These squares represent the middle of a face.  You've got 4 extra faces in there with no area.  if you select everything and then remove doubles ("w"-->"remove doubles") those squares will go away and you will probably lose that line in object mode.

You do get more than just the outline in object mode, you get all lines where the angle changes by some amount.  All the lines you have there except for the outer lines are between flat faces with no change in angle, so you won't get a line there.  Not really sure how to change it to show all lines, but I'm sure someone around here does if it can be done.

Wow, that was quick! Thanks for the reply. So do the "doubles"  you mentioned slow down rendering at all or are they ignored by the render engine b/c they don't have any area?

Thanks again,

John

you can also get rid of each one singularly by box selecting (b) two of them at once and then clicking alt M (center).  if you want to keep these verticies because you need them,  but want them not to be doubles, select one end (last place extrude occured and then click ctrl +(on the numpad)  untill you have that area selected once.   to show all the verticies outside of object mode click slowerdraw in the buttons panel -->edit buttons-->mesh tab

I'm not sure what effect they have on render speed...I suppose if you get enough it will slow the render down by taking up so much RAM that you have to use swap space which is incredibly slow.  The main way they affect rendering is by producing strange effects when you have smooth shading or subsurf enabled.  They can make it a nightmare to edit your meshes, since you've really got two vertices instead of one everywhere, and they take up RAM so again if if you've got too many it will be really slow to do anything else in your scene.  I would not use this as a method to get lines to show up in edit mode, if that's what you're getting at.

Nice one, thanks to both of you.  Those were all good pointers. oodmb was spot on with the slow draw setting, thats exactly what I was going for.

While I was doing trying out your suggestions I somehow closed the buttons window by accident. I tried to use the "split area" function but it refused to work after that. Is there a key-in I may have hit accidently that causes this or did I just hit a glitch somewhere? Haven't had this happen before.

control + up arrow, maybe?  those keys make a window take up the whole screen, then typing it again makes the screen go back to normal.

btw, using two verticies in one spot is realy usefull for changing the distribution of light when you are using a smooth setting or subsurf setting.  

however, i am unsure why you need to see these lines in edit mode,  usualy its much more logical to hide them as that would increase the fps of the view which is much more important when you have multiple high poly objects in the scen which need editing.   just like in a game, when you have 400 spheres lined up like i did in my array picture,  editing the scene will become slower on the graphics card.  to improve this rather than clicking slow draw, click fast draw like 5 times.  each time you click it decreases the number of verticies displayed.   

if you like you can see this effect by adding a grid (100X100), setting it to dupliverts, and making it a parent to a sphere. 

yep, cntl + up did it thanks haloedrain

oodmb - thanks for the tip on the vertices.

I guess this is where I need to try and put a mental block b/t myself and previous apps I've used. I'm just so used to seeing the whole mesh all the time in any mode that I'm more comfortable that way.

I see the merits of having slow draw turned off and I'm sure I can get used to it. Starting out and not knowing that option was there though I thought something was lacking with my graphics card.

While in object mode, try going to the object buttons (F7) and in the draw panel , under Draw Extra, click the "Wire" button. This will let you see your wireframe in any mode. As oodmb points out, the slowdraw button will draw the entire wireframe, then each consecutive click of the fastdraw button will draw less and less of it, I guess for performance reasons on complex scenes.