How to extrude / thicken a transformed surface?

pat_lee274

Hi, I created a simple part onto which I pasted a complex .stl file.
Now I'm trying to make the part hollow with a certain thickness, but no matter which tool I try it does not allow to me select the surface that was important and transformed by me.

Please see below video:
https://streamable.com/n82jjp

Can someone help me how to make it hollow?
Thank you!
I'm new to OnShape and it's been years since I've done CAD.

_anton

Meshes are technically editable in Onshape, but best practice is to avoid them as much as possible. If you need to hollow out the mesh, I think you'll want to do that in, say, Blender. Then import it into Onshape to do actual parametric work, only doing booleans between it and the Onshape parts when strictly necessary.

pat_lee274

_anton said:

Meshes are technically editable in Onshape, but best practice is to avoid them as much as possible. If you need to hollow out the mesh, I think you'll want to do that in, say, Blender. Then import it into Onshape to do actual parametric work, only doing booleans between it and the Onshape parts when strictly necessary.

The reason I can't do that is as I don't have a good computer, so I can only use OnShape at the moment.
Is there any other way of doing that?
Also are all imported .stl automatically meshes? I thought this was a solid part I downloaded from thingiverse

_anton

We may be able to help; the shell feature works on meshes to a degree. Can you share your document?

Yes, an STL file is just a triangle soup; it's not very robust to modification.

pat_lee274

_anton said:

We may be able to help; the shell feature works on meshes to a degree. Can you share your document?

Yes, an STL file is just a triangle soup; it's not very robust to modification.

Thank you, I did play around with it since I started the thread and found something that seems to semi-work, but not sure how well?

My goal is to 3D print this

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/bf7d483e0667ca081d058dd7/w/962eba5693fb68e6af365fe1/e/20ecf3c46d1522cf0dcf81d8

pat_lee274

I tried using Fusion 360 to convert it into a .step file and it worked very well, changed the .stl mesh into a body and exported it as a .step
However now when I import into OnShape, nothing opens up. It says imported but it stays like attached screenshot.

Any suggestions on how to proceed?

Thank you.