Unable to Shell a Body

[MaxHugen]

I'm having problems trying to shell a couple of bodies. They are for an F50 catamaran hull, which was split in the bow area - as they are in real life. Then I tried to shell each of the two bodies.

I tried shell on each of the two bodies:

and...

While researching these errors, I found a post by @jeff_strater  at this post  where he explains that "Shell will definitely fail at times".  I'm wondering if anyone has a suggestion on how I might do this?

One idea I did have is that I'd be happy to have just the center area of the hull shelled, which is where the crew are. So I'm thinking of splitting this area into separate bodies, and then try shell on that one section. So long as I can "join" those bodies back together again?

Any thoughts please?

[etfrench]

You may need to split the body in more places to remove the small radius bends.  See attached file.

Another possible method is to offset each of the section drawings, then loft the inside and use the extrude/cut to create the shell.

[MaxHugen · Accepted solution]

SUCCESS!   🙂  I tried a heap of things, aiming for a Split-Shell-Combine solution. Here's what I did:

1. Created a new test project, as I was nervous about undoing everything, and I'd spent a lot of time just getting to a correctly shaped solid body!
2. Recreated just one (central) part of the "Main Hull", using 3 sketches and creating a body.
   
3. Tried Shell using one face. Over 10 mins later (I have a decade old laptop) it failed.
   
4. Then I Split the body, getting just a very narrow "slice" of the hull, and tried Shell again, but this time I selected both end faces, and it WORKED in just a couple of seconds.   I was onto something.
5. Undid the last Shell and Split, redid it after Splitting the body into a much wider "slice" - worked AOK again.
6. Undid again, and this time I didn't Split, just did the Shell on the whole body, selecting both end faces, and again, AOK!
   
7. Feeling pretty cocky now, I tried Shell in my actual project, again selecting both end faces, and again it worked. You beauty!  🙂
   

Now my next challenge is to "close" the transom. Still looking for the way to do this.

In a pinch, I could do a split very close to the transom, the width of the thickness of the shell, and then combine it again with the rest of the body, but I doubt this is the best way to do it.

[MaxHugen]

Thanks @etfrench, I think I did something similar.