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tearing hapenes pretty often. as some said. especially on other materials like plastic, wood, etc. but also metals tear very often. last week i had an incident with my buisness car : i was driving not more than 2kp/h. and not hit something at 50 or even 150 kp/h. i think it would be even awsome to have tearing with: deleting the parts of a mesh that are associated with broken beams. maybe a little trick to hide those areas would be possible. ?
Did you select the text? and click B and I (it should turn on at first, then click it again to turn it off), it worked for me...