Help with converting unstitched bodies to solid model.

[Anonymous]

I have received a 3d model of an electric motor from a manufacturer to add onto an assembly I was already building.

Annoyingly the model received was all unstitched bodies.

I have tried stitching all the bodies in the patch workspace which seemed to work, however in the model workspace the motor still appears semi-transparent and most annoyingly of all, is completely invisible when raisin a 2D drawing!!

Also when I stitched all the bodies the motor mountin holes dissappeared which is also very frustrating.

Please help!!

[jakefowler]

Hi James,

Just glancing at the image, it looks likely that the main body of the motor hasn't fully stitched, which could explain the beaviour you're seeing. I'd be very happy to take a look and see where it might be tripping-up and what a possible solution might be.

Are you able to share the file? You can either share the public link here, or send the f3d file (either posting it here or email to jake.fowler (at) autodesk.com). Let me know if you need any help with this.

Thanks!

Jake

[Anonymous]

Hi Jake, thanks for the quick reply.

Here is the public link. http://a360.co/1FPgemZ

If you find a solution I would appreciate it if you could talk me through step-by-step what to do when I receive unstitched models as they are always a pain for me. In the business I am in I have no use to ever use the patch workspace so only ever need solid models.

Rgs,

James

[jakefowler]

Hi James,

Of course, will be glad to give the details of what I try.

It appears as though I'm not able to download the model. Did you enable the 'Allow item to be downloaded' checkbox in the Share Public Link options? 

If not, enabling that should do the trick.

Thanks!
Jake

[Anonymous]

Sorry I must ahve missed that.

Please try this link:

http://a360.co/1FPgemZ

[jakefowler]

It's working now, many thanks! I'll get back to you once I've looked into it.

Thanks,

Jake

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

Since Jake is in China, and is now asleep, I took a look at this model (hope that's OK).  This is basically just a stitching tolerance problem.  The Stitch command starts out with a default tolerance of 0.01mm.  If you select all the surfaces in the component of concern, the Stitch command will show edges that correctly stitch as green, and those that don't as red.  You can see with the default tolerance that there are quite a few red edges.  (this design shows a bug that the preview is offset from where it should be, which we will fix):

bumping up the tolerance gets better results, but there are still some unstitched edges:

even increasing it to 0.1 mm doesn't quite get us there:

Finally, I had to go all the way to 0.5 mm (quite a wide gap), but was able to get this stitched into a solid:

So, wherever this data comes from, it is fairly "noisy" in terms of tolerance, but we can at least make it work.  

Hope this helps.

Jeff Strater (Fusion development)

[Anonymous]

This is a great help many thanks.

[Anonymous]

Hi Jeff, that is a very good tip. Setting tolerance seems to be a fix for some of the Stitching problems. I will try that also. Sometimes I do wonder why bodies could not be stitched together. "0.5mm" is a wide gap. But if the projects came from Clients sometimes we just had to fix them without complaints. That is the most difficult part!

[Anonymous]

Hi, About these "noisy" unstitched bodies, I noticed if the designers themselves came from a "Mold Designing" background they might like to unstitch bodies in order to rearrange the parts for a particular mold (mould) layout. Mold designing is a special technique that is a totally new experience from "Product Designing". So the people who submitted the project to our Fusion 360 member might had a "Mold Designing" background. They always use wide gaps because when the parts are made using these molds they might want to join the parts with thin gaskets or by welding. In the case of plastic injection they always do that due to the big tolerance of the imperfect injection process. The wide gap will provide a gap for Acrylic Glue or other chemicals to glue the parts together. Looks like this motor assembly is an industrial project that might be the case.

[Anonymous]

I am still struggling with unstitched bodies. I am yet to come across one that stitches as simply as the one above did. Most of the ones I am trying to do, no matter how high I put the tolerance, there are still red areas that cant be stitched, and ultimately still a portion of the model is invisible when I try and raise a 2d drawing.

For example this hydraullic pump pictured. No matter what I do the end cap is always invisible on the drawing. Its driving me crazy.

http://a360.co/1zxi7yB