Split Body failure - "No intersection between target(s) and split tool."

[bassbonematt]

I've seen many posts on this error in the forum, but none of them seem to address this problem that I sometimes have (or perhaps my search skills are lacking--if so, I sincerely apologize). I'm attempting to split a body and use the face of a different body as the splitting tool. This often works, but sometimes I get the error, "No intersection between target(s) and split tool." As far as I can tell, it's not predictable, and in every case, the face does very much intersect the body I'm attempting to split (using the "Extend Splitting Tool" option).

In this example, the body to split is a sub-component of the splitting tool, but that doesn't seem to make a difference. I've tried moving the body to split out to be a sibling to the splitting tool, and it still failed.

To work around this, I create an offset plane co-planar to the face I'm attempting to use and use that as the splitting tool, which always works--several extra steps compared to how it seems like it should work. Any help here would be greatly appreciated.

[robduarte]

It's because the two bodies are in separate components. You could activate the component containing the body to be split, add a construction plane that lies on that face from the other body (using Offset Plane) and split with that newly created construction plane (since it's in the same component as the body to be split).

[bassbonematt]

Rob,

Thanks for the reply. The offset plane solution is the one I always end up using, but this really seems like an arbitrary/unnecessary restriction (or just a bug). I'd love to hear from Autodesk why they chose this behavior.

Matt Smith

[robduarte]

Me too. I do think it is consistent with how components work otherwise - they generally don't interact with each other. For example, if you try to extrude a body from Component 1 through a body in Component 2, it doesn't Cut through the body in Component 1. (By default, anyway)

[bassbonematt]

Rob,

In this example, the active component is the parent component for these two components, so an extrude from one through the other actually would cut by default.

Another thought--The user literally chooses the exact bodies they want to split and the face they want to use as the splitting tool, so it's not like the user should be surprised that the body they chose was split! 🙂

Matt Smith

[robduarte]

I'm with you. I guess I just thought that conceptually, the idea is that components don't have dependencies on other components. Ie: that they're independent units?