Planes not creating a closed cell for boundary fill?

[Anonymous]

My robotics team was working on a quick design to 3D print to see if it solved a problem (its a sort of angled skid plate to allow the 2WD robot to slide up onto a low platform).  This has turned into a 3 day fight trying to create a wedge shaped polygon to join with our existing body.  Nevermind that trying to re-learn the law of cosines was about enough to drive me bonkers before I had them approach the problem a different way.

We took an existing piece, shortened it, then made 5 planes at the desired positions and angles to delineate the polygon-to-be to join with that work.  The problem is when I select the planes to work with for boundary fill, it doesn't seem to define any cells.  It doesn't matter that the visual representations of the work planes don't reach the intersection does it?   I assume if I make a plane, it extends to either infinity, or as close as the numerical ability of the software to model in an efficient fashion allows.  My part still shouldn't be all that large anyway, only ~10.5 cm on its longest side.

If anyone has suggestions as to what I am doing wrong, I'd appreciate it.

http://a360.co/2yLvrqE

http://autode.sk/2yL608t

[jeff_strater · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

For reasons that I can no longer remember, Boundary Fill requires at least one solid to be selected.  You can't just create a volume out of planes.  And you are correct, the display extent of the planes does not matter at all.

All you need to do is to create a dummy volume that encompasses your planes, then you should be able to create whatever volume you want.  Just "Remove" the dummy volume when you are finished.

Jeff