Extrude to COMPONENT ??

[RogerInHawaii]

Is there a way to perform an extrude operation where To Object is selected and the object that I want to extrude TO is a Component?? It appears that it will only extrude to a Body.

I've got a Component that consists of a main body but also a bunch of additional bodies. In my case the extra bodies are bolt heads and washers. Basically I want to make a mold, of sorts, of the front surface of the component. But the Extrude To Object doesn't handle it.

I tried doing an extrude THROUGH the front of the entire component, creating a new Body, and then trying to do a Combine CUT operation between the new body and the existing component, but it doesn't like that at all, showing a bunch of failure messages (problems with edges and other things) depending on how I'm trying to do it. 

The design file is too big to attach to this message.

[etfrench]

Extrude to the body, then Combine/Cut the bolts.

[RogerInHawaii]

Hmmm, hadn't thought of that approach. Might do it, but I've got SO MANY of these components to do this same procedure with, it would be LOTS of work.

Still hoping there's a more straightforward approach. And gotta wonder why extrude to Component doesn't seem to be allowed.

[jeff_strater]

no, there is no "extrude to component".  This is just a limitation in the underlying modeling kernel.  The kernel knows nothing about "components", only bodies, and it cannot terminate to multiple bodies.

[RogerInHawaii]

Even if the underlying modeling kernel knows nothing about "components" I don't see that that would implicitly translate into "[extrude] cannot terminate to multiple bodies". There are lots of operations that operate on multiple bodies and allow you to select those bodies with a Select operation, but the Extrude To operation doesn't even allow THAT. I would think it's kind of a ray-tracing type of operation. You have multiple bodies that can terminate the extrusion and for any ray it's working with at each point in the operation it checks to see which body it encounters first. It's got to be something like that even with a single target body, doesn't it?

Plus, aren't nearly all operations at a higher conceptual level than the underlying modeling kernel?

[etfrench]

There are a couple of things you can try:

1. Make the bolts a selection set and use that to combine/cut the extruded body.
2. Combine the bolts and the object to body into a new component which can be  used in the Project command.  The component can be removed when done with it.

[RogerInHawaii]

Yes, your number 2 suggestion is what I'm trying at the moment. For this particular design I don't really need to make it a separate component, can just leave the bolts/washer joined together with the main body. But since I've got some 30 such "main bodies", each with their own set of bolts/washers, it's just a lot of extra work when an Extrude To Component would avoid all that.

I have to believe that others encounter this same kind of situation. Using a work-around works, but would be so very nice not to have to do that.

[jeff_strater]

Certainly, we could take all the bodies in a component and its all of its child components, join them into one body, and use that as the termination body.  But, the combine could fail, resulting in another point of failure.  That, also, would not work for surface bodies.  To be honest, I have not heard many (if any) requests for this in the past, so it is unlikely to get much traction in the foreseeable future.

[RogerInHawaii]

I don't know how Fusion actually calculates the extrusion TO a body, but I wouldn't think that it would need to effectively first combine the selected set of bodies into a single body. Leave them separate. For every point in the extrusion profile you "extend it out" to see if it intersects any of the bodies. If it does then that point from the profile can indeed be extended TO. If it fails to intercept a body then the Extend To FOR THAT PROFILE point fails. The entire Extend To fails only if NO body is ever intercepted for any point of the extrusion profile. You end up with an extrusion that only extends those portions of the extension profile that extrudes to intersect with the specified bodies.

[davebYYPCU]

You should become familiar with Boundary Fill.  

Pic is worth a thousand words, reading this after answering your other topic.

You can mold this with proper construction.

3 components.

Molded (effectively extrude to components)

Might help....