Hollow Part?

christopher_owens

 I have thought of a "Hollow' part. I suppose a Boolean of a Scaled in Place Part inside a Part. Or Slice the Part in two, shell both pieces and Boolean back together. Perhaps under Shell could be a Hollow. Might be a 3D Printing want! I imagine you could Extrude a "Drain Hole" to a Wall Thickness depth and pick the bottom surface for the Shell??

andrew_troup

You can model the inside or outside surfaces of the desired part and use "Thicken"

jakeramsley

Hollow should be available soon.  In the meantime, my preferred method is to do a thicken + intersect.

1. Model the part you want to hollow.


2. Start a thicken and set it to intersect.  Set the thickness of the part that you desire.


3. Cross/box-select all of the faces.  This should create a thicken that points inwards and the resulting intersection leaves a hollow body.


4. Use a section plane to verify it is hollowed correctly.



We had a recent competition with our QA interns here about hollowing an amorphous part.  We got some pretty creative solutions.  Another one feature method would be to use the part as both the tool and target in a boolean subtract, include an offset that is the desired wall thickness and choose 'Keep tools' option.

andrew_troup

You can model the inside or outside surfaces of the desired part and use "Thicken"

christopher_owens

@andrew_troup  I tried the "Drain Hole" and accidentally found something out! The Extrude-Remove is only 0.05in deep. I picked the bottom of the "hole" for the surface to shell. The Shell is 0.1in thickness! So I got a Hollow part without a "hole" in it!

christopher_owens

Just for fun and to verify!

jakeramsley

Hollow should be available soon.  In the meantime, my preferred method is to do a thicken + intersect.

1. Model the part you want to hollow.


2. Start a thicken and set it to intersect.  Set the thickness of the part that you desire.


3. Cross/box-select all of the faces.  This should create a thicken that points inwards and the resulting intersection leaves a hollow body.


4. Use a section plane to verify it is hollowed correctly.



We had a recent competition with our QA interns here about hollowing an amorphous part.  We got some pretty creative solutions.  Another one feature method would be to use the part as both the tool and target in a boolean subtract, include an offset that is the desired wall thickness and choose 'Keep tools' option.

christopher_owens

I stumbled across this creating a revolved surface. In Sketch 1 is a construction line that is to be used as the axis of revolution. When doing a surface it fails saying surface intersects itself. But click on Solid and it creates the solid! Something to watch out for?? I selected the entire sketch by picking on it in the Feature list. I assumed any construction line would be "ignored".

christopher_owens

@jakeramsley  & @andrew_troup  After a couple of tries I got this to work! I got "confused" at first by the term 'surfaces' by just trying to create Surfaces and Thicken those! I was wondering how you got an Extrude-Surface with "ends"! Once I reread the tip a couple of times and tried it...the light bulb brightened! Can't pick the Part 1 from the list... oh window-box selects every surface!

caroline_read

I don't really understand the difference between the shell feature and what a hollow feature would be. 

jakeramsley

caroline_read said:

I don't really understand the difference between the shell feature and what a hollow feature would be. 

Shell features removes the selected face and then offsets all other faces of the part to create a wall thickness.  Hollow doesn't remove the selected face, just offsets all of the faces to create a wall thickness.

christopher_owens

Shell would be used to create a "tray" for example, or a "tupperware" bowl. Something that has an opening and a wall thickness elsewhere. Hollow would create something like an inflatable football or beach ball eg. Or a Chocolate Easter Bunny!