mesh to prismatic solid fails for multiple reasons

[10931418]

ok, ill try and illustrate my process the best i can. End goal is a solid for FEM with minimal faces

I am a sketchup pro user. I have been using it for years, its how my brain works. I have tried to use solidworks (i am a cswp) and after a few months to a year, i had to go back to sketchup, it works better for my brain 🙂 we all use software we are comfortable with haha

Ok, so i made a project in sketchup and using solid inspector in SU, it reports the object is watertight/solid and has volume. I export the object as an STL file.

Next, in F360, i import the mesh. F360 reports its not solid and has no volume. I dont understand why?

SO using the repair function, i can not get it to repair with stich and remove. So i try wrap. This time it repairs.

Next i try to convert the mesh but it "fails to compute" Says it needs face groups. 

So i do mesh,prepare, face groups, accurate. it takes a while since i have so many faces (more on this later)

once face groups have been created, i convert the mesh to a prismatic body. 

it literally removes 90% of the object and leaves a bunch of floating pieces everywhere as shown in the attached image. 

ok, so i try the process again, but i decimate it so the total amount of faces is 4999. Still same issue. 

now, trying not to step on toes, BUT i had to test again but in another software package, and for whatever reason, it worked. I do not ever use freecad at all, most opensource cad software is very difficult and janky at best, but for whatever reason, freecad worked on this file, which than gave me the idea to use facet mode in F360 and it worked.

So, prismatic is not working the way i need it to. But i get a solid body with facet mode, only issue, the area i need to add forces to for FEM has hundreds of faces i have to select.

so 3 questions:

1. Why did stitch and remove not work?
2. How do we get prismatic to work correctly?
3. Since facet mode worked, how do i combine faces now in a simple way and clean it up?

Thank you for reading my post.

[jhackney1972]

Please attach your STL for a better chance to get some help. 

[10931418]

yes, thank you for mentioning that. It has now been added 🙂