topic Re: Filling an hollow solid completely in Inventor Forum

Filling an hollow solid completely

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 08:56:05 GMT

Hi all,
I have a solid which have some voids inside (eg. some cavities), it is not only a shell but it has a very thin thickness and it has no problems of boundaries to be patched.
Is there a way to fill those voids?

Thanks

Re: Filling an hollow solid completely

johnsonshiue — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 17:04:47 GMT

Hi! Using Boundary Patch would be the last resort. If I were you, I would use Sculpt command. Simply create a parallel workplane at the bottom. Sculpt -> select the workplane -> change direction to pointing inward. Or, you can use Delete Face -> Heal. If you cannot figure it out, please share the file here so forum experts can take a look and comment further.

Many thanks!

Re: Filling an hollow solid completely

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Sep 2019 20:23:49 GMT

The solid is not "open" as in the picture that is a sectional view, so I don't think that patch command could work here.
Anyways thank you for your answer, I attach the file (uploaded on MEGA since it is 50 Mb)
https://mega.nz/#!Cd0WVKJC!jJPzP7kwYdHU4-4IsYgs_r-DM-36aGU0kQPaD6ubcA0

Re: Filling an hollow solid completely

WHolzwarth — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 19:45:43 GMT

Here's a download link for a zipped STEP file.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfk5wv9j5zt5wil/Entei_solid%20V5%20-%20WH.zip?dl=0

I think, it's good enough for your needs.

Re: Filling an hollow solid completely

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 20:03:52 GMT

Thank you very much, this is an amazing job!
There is still the front-left paw that is void, could you tell me how you have reached this result so that I could correct it (and also learn it for the future)?

Re: Filling an hollow solid completely

johnsonshiue — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 21:29:08 GMT

Hi! The model came from mesh. Inventor at the moment does not have extensive mesh modeling abilities. To manipulate mesh, it is better to use mesh modeling tool like MeshMixer (www.meshmixer.com) or Netfabb.

Many thanks!

Re: Filling an hollow solid completely

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 21:43:59 GMT

Hi!
I tried to use meshmixer in the last days, before trying with Inventor and asking here, but I didn't succeed in fixing this problem with it.

Re: Filling an hollow solid completely

Justin.B. — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 22:23:25 GMT

Meshmixer will take some effort too, I expect. Your model is made up of several overlapping pieces

You're getting voids inside because each component is a thin walled, water tight solid, not just exterior surfaces. They don't overlap particularly nicely, so the outside contours don't merge cleanly into a closed shell. I'd recommend working on each part individually to delete the unwanted interior faces, and build up the areas where they connect so that a boolean has plenty of overlap between closed solids.

As others have said though, Inventor isn't well equipped for these sorts of mesh edits.

Re: Filling an hollow solid completely

WHolzwarth — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 22:37:09 GMT

Here's my actual input, and I think, it's the last one. 19.5 MB in Zip.

Take it, like it is. Describing my workflow would be a very long story.

Re: Filling an hollow solid completely

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 06:15:34 GMT

Thank you for the workflow suggestion!
I will try to obtain this result also by following this procedure.

Re: Filling an hollow solid completely

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 06:16:21 GMT

It is perfect!
Thank you very much, I appreciate a lot your efforts.