Increasing the size of holes left by a boolean subtract

jim_griesmer

I created a box that has a lid. The lid should have holes where there are small pins coming from the box. 

I placed the holes in the lid by putting the lid on the box using mate connectors, then I did a subtract boolean operation to create holes in the lid. This worked great. But...

I'm going to print this on a 3d printer and I know that I need to make the holes bigger, otherwise the pins won't actually fit.

Is there a way to do this? Note that the number of pins (and thus holes) is variable depending on the box configuration, so doing it manually, hole by hole won't work.

eric_pesty

You can use the "offset" option in the boolean.
Or you could also use a "move face" features after the fact to add clearance.

jim_griesmer

Thanks for the pointers. However, I don't see a way to automatically do this for all the holes. I could do it individually using the method you describe, but I have a variable I can use to modify the size of the box and lid -- and thus the number of pins and holes.

eric_pesty

One way to deal with this is to set you configuration to the value that will create the highest number of pins and select all the faces (either in the offset, assuming you can't just use the "offset all") or as a separate feature. There will be missing selections for other sizes but it will work fine.

As long as you have an upper limit it should be ok...

jim_griesmer

Ah, yeah, that's a good idea. Thanks!