Working out volume

[Anonymous]

I have little knowledge of 3ds max software and i am trying to work out the volume of the 'crevice' in the centre of my mesh, is there a simple way to do this? (File attached below)

Any help appreciated, thanks.

[leeminardi]

The first thing to address is to create a closed shape for calculaing a volume.  For your mesh I tried the following.

1. Right-click the mesh and convert to an Editable Mesh.
2. Go to the Modify Tab and select the face sub-element.
3. Delete the faces that do not define the shape of the crevice
4. CReate faces to close the crevice.  Use the 3D snap with vertex to help create the extra faces.

Once you have a closed shape you can go to the Utilities tab and click Measure. This will give you the volume of the selected shape. From the online doc:

• Volume Displays the total volume of all objects in the selection, in units cubed. Note that objects with "holes" caused by missing faces can result in inaccurate volume values. When an object has one or more holes, an asterisk appears beside the Volume number.

I tested the procedure with the small crevice of you file.  I got a * with the volume although the shape looked closed so I did a Boolean Intersect with the mesh and a large box that completely enclosed the shape to get a topologoically valid volume.  3ds Max showed a negative volume so I flipped the normals and got a volume of 580cu.  Check if this number is reasonable for the small crevice in your mesh.

~Lee