Combine (boolean) operation on Components??

[RogerInHawaii]

The Combine operation, available under the Modify menu, lets you do boolean operations like Cut and Join, but it only operates on Bodies. Is there any comparable operation that can operate on Components?

I realize that, at least for the "tool" bodies of a Combine operation, I COULD individually, manually, select each and every Body within the desired component AND all of the Bodies within all of the SUB-Components of the tool components but, man, it would be so much easier if there were a Combine Components operation that would do it all in one operation.

Is there? Have I just not found it yet?

Or any suggestions as to how I might accomplish what I need to do without all the individual manual selecting of tool bodies?

[GRSnyder]

What is it that you need to do, exactly? The fact that you have so many bodies that it's inconvenient to select them makes me suspicious that there might be a better way to achieve your actual goal. Can you post the model?

[laughingcreek · Accepted solution]

the combine tool doesn't let you window select when running for some reason.  but you can pre-select before running the tool. 

Select the body you want to be the "target" first.  then hold down the shift key and window select all the bodies.  THEN run the combine tool.  the first body you selected will be the target, and all the rest of the bodies will be the tools.

[RogerInHawaii]

@laughingcreek  YES!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you for that suggestion. I tried it a couple of times and it seems to work just fine.

It doesn't ALWAYS work, however. I tried it on a fairly complex component that had a whole slew of sub and sub-sub-components and it failed to pick up all the bodies as you can see here. I had surrounded the entire set of components with a selection box and you can see that it only got SOME of the bodies (which are shown in blue) and somehow bypassed a lot (show in grey).

BUT, I should be able to overcome that by using your suggested approach on each major sub-component, turning each one of those into a solid body and then combining THOSE solid bodes into the desired SINGLE solid body. So, a LOT less manual work than individually selecting all the different bodies in such a huge major component.

I really appreciate your help with this. 🙂