Need help asap. Imported design is completely hollow.

santiago_crafter

Need some help asap. I've imported a design (have in STL/STEP), but it seems to have imported as surfaces, and the entire design is hollow. How do I convert this to something solid/real?

Thanks,

Alex_Kempen

Enclose will turn the regions enclosed by surfaces or planes into a solid part, but it looks like you already have solid parts which are bounded by surfaces. If that is the case, you can use delete parts to get rid of the surfaces, then proceed as expected.

santiago_crafter

Alex_Kempen said:

Enclose will turn the regions enclosed by surfaces or planes into a solid part, but it looks like you already have solid parts which are bounded by surfaces. If that is the case, you can use delete parts to get rid of the surfaces, then proceed as expected.

Thanks, Alex! Can't seem to get it done – would you mind if I share the doc with you?

Alex_Kempen

You can if you want, but I would encourage you to take a look at this article first. If you see any parts listed (not surfaces), then you don't actually need to do anything other than deleting the extraneous surfaces. If you only have surfaces, try using the enclose feature, select every surface (you can easily do it via the surfaces list), then see if that returns a valid part. If you do share the document, I would recommend making it public and posting the link here instead of sharing it with me directly.

santiago_crafter

Alex_Kempen said:

You can if you want, but I would encourage you to take a look at this article first. If you see any parts listed (not surfaces), then you don't actually need to do anything other than deleting the extraneous surfaces. If you only have surfaces, try using the enclose feature, select every surface (you can easily do it via the surfaces list), then see if that returns a valid part. If you do share the document, I would recommend making it public and posting the link here instead of sharing it with me directly.

Thanks Alex – any help is hugely appreciated.

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/3a697dac4d00e73a10daa8ab/w/07e4794b507463f513a71306/e/9f7eee036982cf662e5b7901

jake_delano19

Try using Thicken or Enclose to solidify the imported surfaces. STL models will not import as solid geometry but STEP files should be solid as long as they were solid in their previous format.

santiago_crafter

jake_delano said:

Try using Thicken or Enclose to solidify the imported surfaces. STL models will not import as solid geometry but STEP files should be solid as long as they were solid in their previous format.

Problem is, I've imported the doc from a fluid dynamics software. It seems the whole car is in surfaces.

Alex_Kempen

It looks like your imported model was poorly modeled, or is in a weird format that Onshape doesn't like. Like @jake_delano said, you shouldn't have surfaces when importing a part which was originally solid. Try importing it as a different file type; if that doesn't work, you might have to piece together it manually, recreating parts based on the imported surfaces.