Surface Selection Techniques

[Anonymous]

General question for all the experts out there.  What are some good tips/tricks for selecting multiple surfaces.  I have a model that is composed of something like 1500 individual surfaces.  I'd like to know if there is a way I can select only the "Top" surfaces, or edge surfaces (or alternatively if there is a way to select all surfaces that are visible from the Top view or side views).  Something like selecting loops, and chaining when dealing with sketches would be helpful.  What I'm trying to do is extract the upper most surfaces out of an imported collection of surfaces (its a cube-like shape, not organic or curves), and then use them to create a thickened solid.  I don't want to spend the time making the 300 clicks neccessary to get all the surfaces by holding <ctrl> (not to mention a wrong click without <ctrl> could send you back to square one).  Any ideas?

[JDMather]

Zip and attach your file here (preferably the source file, IGES, STEP, whatever).

http://au.autodesk.com/?nd=class&session_id=3056

[Anonymous]

Here is a basic example file.  I can't upload the actual file due to release restrictions.  This is a very simplified example as well, the real part is closer to ~1000 surfaces .  The goal would be to select the "top" (i.e. what can be seen from the TOP view, including the drafted faces) surfaces so that I could then use these to do a thicken command and make the part a uniform thickness throughout.  I know that I can manually delete/select surfaces, but I'm hoping that when I scale this ~150 surface part up to ~1000 surfaces there is a quicker way to select the group I need.

[JDMather]

I would never have 174 surfaces in the Modeling Environment.

I would import the original file into the Construction Environment and use a combination of view setting (like Front), window or crossing window and Group visibility (think AutoCAD layer control if you are familiar with AutoCAD) to quickly isolate the desired surface, Stitch, Promote and Thicken Quilt.

So the steps are:

1. Import or copy to CE.

(if anything in ME drag EOP to top of browser or delete).

2. Set selection filter to Feature priority.

3. Create Group to hide (Visibility) either the good stuff or the unwanted stuff.

4. Set view cube to convenient orientation for window or crossing window selection.

5. Select good stuff or unwanted stuff (actually you might create two groups) and move to appropriate group(s). (Don't worry about accidently getting wrong surface(s) - you can easily fix this in next step.)

6. You might accidently get a few surface you do/don't want in incorrect group.  These will now be easy to move to correct group.

7. Stitch the good stuff.

8. Promote to ME.

9. Thicken with Quilt option.

All of this is assuming you really do want to thicken and the original part isn't uniform thickness - otherwise there might be better repair methods in CE/ME.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info JD, this helps a lot!

[CCarreiras]

But...when i drag a window the program selects the near visivel faces (thats what i want to select), but selects also the faces that are lyinb in the back (the surfaces that i dont want to chose). for avoiding this i have to select one by one!!!

And the same happends when you are in the FEA enviroment!!! if you want to apply a pressure in one side of the part, you have to select the surfaces one by one . A plastic part has thousonds of surfaces...a work for one day just to select the wrigth faces... in SW you can do this in 1 minute,just selecting the faces by dragging a window selecting the faces, and only the faces that are close to you.

Select surfaces in inventor is a mess...

[JDMather]

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@carloscarreiras8703 wrote:

Select surfaces in inventor is a mess...

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Surfaces? or Faces?  Attach your file here.