Extrude/Thicken a curved surface

[timothytu07]

How do I extrude this cuved surface? Right now the surface is 0.5mm thick but I would like it to be 0.75mm thick. The face is selected in the photo. Whenever i pull or offset surface an error occurs and fusion crashes. Additionally, I cannot select this face in thicken (see replies for screenshots). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Drewpan]

Hi,

Try the Thicken Command.

Cheers

Andrew

[timothytu07]

Sorry, I should have added this in the post, whenever i pull or offset surface an error occurs and fusion crashes. Additionally, I cannot select this face in thicken.

[Drewpan]

Hi,

What about changing to Surface and creating a surface of the face, thickening it then doing a Combine?

Cheers

Andrew

[timothytu07]

It will not let me click the ok button. Is this the feature you had in minds?

[jeff_strater]

Thicken only works on surface bodies.  You want Offset Faces in this case.  When you say "Fusion crashes when I offset this face", does it crash to a crash report, or is it apparently hung?  If there is a CER generated, have you submitted it, and/or do you have a crash report number.  If Fusion is unresponsive, it may just be REALLY busy, and might eventually finish.  If you share the model, we can take a look at it.

Also, I suspect it will be unlikely that you can Offset just that single face in this picture:

you will likely have to select all tangent-continuous faces to that face.  Again, if you share the model, we can give it a try.  Thanks

[timothytu07]

I found a workaround, but its annoying. I scaled the object down, then offset each face and then thickened the offet face. This method is tedious, but is it what you were refering to?

[jeff_strater]

That is essentially what @Drewpan is suggesting.  I think there are simpler ways to do it (one Thicken instead of lots of them) by deleting the faces from the solid body.  I tried doing a solid offset faces on the original solid, but it appears to be very low quality (where did you import this from?).  There are tons of sliver faces like this one:

I strongly suspect that is why the solid Offset Faces fails.  Your result still has some of those sliver faces, too, but overall, does not look too bad.  If you are happy with it, then I'd say use it.

[jeff_strater]

also, why did you need to scale the model down?  Just curious

[timothytu07]

I downloaded this from GrabCAD. I needed to scale it down because I wanted it to be a specific size but with a specific thickness. Do you have any recommendations for better websites to dowload CAD files from? Thanks.

[timothytu07]

I downloaded this from GrabCAD and had to scale it down to achieve a specific size while maintaining a particular thickness. Do you have any recommendations for better websites to download CAD files? Thanks.

[etfrench]

You may be able to create an stl of gyroid infill by saving the gcode in a slicer.  Gcode21 claims to do this.

You can create the gcode in your slicer by setting the walls, bottom, and top to 0:

[timothytu07]

My solution has made my file unprintable. I tried using various repair features on different applications and websites, but Orca Slicer keeps crashing when I try to slice it. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

[jeff_strater]

@timothytu07 - what is your goal for this project?  Is it just to print something, or do you have other uses for this gyroid geometry?

If all you want to do is 3D print it, and if you have Design Extension for Fusion, look into the Volumetric tab.  It has a built-in Gyroid cell, and Fusion supports direct conversion of volumetric geometry into Mesh.

I suspect that the bad faceting you see in that STL (and it is bad...) is caused by the questionable geometry I pointed out earlier.

[jeff_strater]

I found this model that might help

It started out as a Solidworks model, I believe, but converts cleanly to Fusion.  It comes in at 0.2mm thickness, but I was able to use Offset Faces to get it to 0.4mm (I did not try any thicker, but you are welcome to).

Original source:  https://www.cadforum.net/viewtopic.php?t=710 

refers to this Google Drive location:  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BLDABbpxG-fRGOGMOaC8UK1-KvDNSXNu 

I exported to Mesh, and then loaded it in Cura.  There were some warnings, but the slicer preview seemed OK, so I think it will work

Fusion design and STL are attached, FYI

[timothytu07]

Thank you for this file, it looks like it works. However, how did you offset the faces in fusion? I am running into errors when I use the offset surface tool. Thanks.

[timothytu07]

I am trying to achieve a thickness of 0.75mm, and the dimensions of 18.75x18.75x18.75mm.

[jeff_strater]

There will be limits to how far you can offset any surface.  Playing around with the original, I can Offset Faces to about .33mm without problem, but, .35mm fails.  At .33mm, you can see some interesting geometry effects happening in some areas that are probably an indicator of why higher offsets fail:

I currently do not have access to the Volumetric functionality, but once I get that restored, I'll show what it can do with gyroids.  Again, that will only really work if you want to 3D print this, as volumetric geometry is different than BRep surface/solid geometry.