How to get rid of holes from a surface, if deleting doesn't work?

[Chuanyin]

I want to delete the two holes from the otherwise flat surface. Simply hitting delete doesn't work; I imported this design as a step file and cannot access previous timeline. I tried to extrude them out but it doesn't mesh with the outer surface--as you can see in the screenshot the minimum distance is not zero. The hole surface might not be perfectly flat. How do I get rid of the two holes and heal the flat surface?

[TheCADWhisperer · Accepted solution]

I can't really tell anything from the screenshot.

Can you File>Export and then Attach the *.f3d file here

or

better yet, zip and attach the original STEP file.

Is this a through hole, or is it blind (has a capping bottom)?

[Chuanyin]

Hi, 

Here's the f3d file. But I believe I was just able to simply delete the holes on the back surface when I open up the component file instead of assembly. It seems like I have to delete the holes drilled last first, let Fusion 360 heal the surface, then delete the holes drilled first.

Thanks!

Chuan

[TheCADWhisperer]

Sounds like you got it - select all of the faces that define the holes.

[jeff_strater]

@Chuanyin - the order of creation does not in any way affect the order that the hole faces can be deleted, especially in a Direct Modeling design such as this.  However, in this particular case, the fact that the "later" holes intersect with the "earlier" holes does mean that you cannot delete them in just any order.  The error message here is accurate:  Fusion cannot heal the gap created by deleting these selected faces, because the face from the side hole has no clear resolution after the delete.  However, if you delete that first, that gap can be healed, and then the back holes can be deleted.  The order of creation does not matter, it is only the geometry.  It would have been possible to create this same geometry with a different order