Boundary Fill Problems\Bugs

[HughesTooling]

While designing mould tools from imported models I quite often need an external shell of the part. Boundary Fill seems like it should be the tool for the job but it doesn't work. In the screencast below you'll see an example box with a couple of holes, I create patches then try using Boundary Fill but I either end up with just the core or a copy of the original box. One more oddity is create new body will make a core or a copy but New Component always creates a copy of the box it will not make a core. I've attached the file.

I can work around this in the patch workspace extracting surfaces into a new component but it's a lot more work.

Thanks Mark

[PhilProcarioJr]

@HughesTooling

Although I agree the boundary tool should work, have you tried the self healing trick for stuff like this?

That's the way I do core and cavity work in Fusion and it seems to work pretty well for stuff like this.

[HughesTooling]

Using Offset face set to zero in the patch workspace works pretty well it's just Boundary Fill set to new component would create the end result in one go. Real strange how boundary fill will not create the core when it set to new component, if you create and activate a new component you can create the core or a copy of the body.

Mark

[PhilProcarioJr]

@HughesTooling

I agree boundary fill would be the way to go if it worked.

I wonder what @jeff_strater would say about this problem....

[HughesTooling]

Found another oddity. If I move the edge of the rectangular hole away from the centre of the component so it's not coplanar with the YZ origin plane I can get Boundary fill to work if I select 2 of the work planes so I end up with 4 cells. Done like this I can get a core or a cavity as a new component. File's attached. I suspect I could have created an offset plane instead of moving the edge of the rectangular hole.  Edit, just tested with an offset plane and it does indeed work like the screencast.

Mark

[HughesTooling]

The workaround using a plane to give you more cells only works if section along the plane is continuous, if there's a hole in the body where the plane crosses it will fail.

Mark

[jeff_strater]

Yeah, these seem like bugs to me.  I've struggled with Boundary Fill as well, and maybe at the root of all this are some pretty bad bugs.

Let me dig into it, see what I can come up with.

Jeff

[jeff_strater]

Surprisingly, I had similar problems with a model like this in Inventor.  I think I need to step back a bit and revisit how this is all supposed to work.  I agree, though, it seems like Boundary Fill is the ideal tool for this kind of a design problem.

Head-scratching time...