Surface Stitch Failures

[Jase77]

Hi everyone.

I've been experiencing some frustrating issues with surface stitching in F360. I'm working on a fairly complex surface model of a vehicle. I am trying to stitch two (pre trimmed) surfaces together but I have a repetitive warning coming up.

The warning reads....1 Reference Failures, BodyCheckError: Stitch result body is invalid

The result doesn't show any red lines between the two areas that I want to join, only around the surface boundaries. I have tried increasing the stitch tolerance but to no avail. It even generates a surface body in the tree, but the stitch symbol in the timeline has a yellow warning on it.

Furthermore, I can even add a fillet between these two 'failed stitched surfaces' without any issues at all!

Any advice or recommendations would be very much appreciated....otherwise my laptop will go out of the window and I will go back to Catia V5 and whizz through this work without a glitch or a headache! 😕

Thanks,

Jason.

[g-andresen]

Hi,
Without commented image material and a shared file it is not possible to give any hint.

günther

[Jase77]

Hi Günther,

Thanks for your quick reply.

Unfortunately, I cannot share the file with you as it is confidential. I have attached some screen grabs for your attention, but I doubt they will do any good??

Many thanks,

Jason.

[g-andresen]

Hi Jason,
For me the screenshots do not contain anything that would allow a statement.
Maybe there is someone in the forum who can do something with it.

günther

[Jase77]

Yeah I thought so, thanks for looking anyway.

I am still battling with it and I cannot figure it out. Both surfaces that I want to stitch have been trimmed with the exact same surface, so theoretically, their boundary lines are exactly the same, so a stitch should be super easy!?

As well as trimming the surfaces prior to stitching I have also tried the 'split face' and 'split body' commands. Unfortunately, this gives me the same result when attempting to stitch!

[TrippyLighting]

You've not shared any images containing information that would be of any value for people who are experienced in surfacing.  Have you checked the integrity of your surfaces/edges with the curvature map and curvature comb tools in the inspect menu?

Do you know how to interpret the results these tools show you?

[Jase77]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your reply. As I mentioned above, this job is confidential so I am limited as to what I can show.

I've been an Automotive Design Engineer for 20 years and have 15 years experience as a Class A Parametric Surfacer using Catia V5. So I understand how surfaces work and how to interpret the results from curvature mapping & tools etc.

I have only been using F360 for around 9 months and this is the first full car body that I have worked on with it. Most of it is going OK so far, but this is holding me up too much now.

Thanks again for your feedback.

[TrippyLighting]

@jeff_strater @jodom4 @harv.saund I understand from a very enlightening conference with Harv that there is interest to improve Fusion 360's surfacing abilities down to the kernel.

This thread might present a rather rare opportunity to interface with a very experienced user.

Also, as I've mentioned in other threads, I believe the stitch tool reports errors when there are none since a recent update.

[TrippyLighting]

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@Jase77 wrote:

I've been an Automotive Design Engineer for 20 years and have 15 years experience as a Class A Parametric Surfacer using Catia V5. So I understand how surfaces work and how to interpret the results from curvature mapping & tools etc.

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It is very rare that we see this experience level her on the Fusion 360 forum. Hopefully, the AD folks can connect with you. Even if it might be a little too late for this model, perhaps it can help improve things under the hood! 

[Jase77]

Thanks for taking that comment exactly how I meant it Peter. I was worried it was going to read too arrogant and that's not how I meant it.

I have figured out a 'work around' for this issue. I know that this isn't necessarily the right way to deal with it, but it's working for now and I haven't got the time to do more research.

Basically, I have noticed that F360 can struggle with fillets when in the surfacing mode. The two surfaces that I wanted to stitch both had some fillets on them in the areas where they were both trimmed. I've never experienced a problem like this with other CAD software. 

I removed the fillets, trimmed and stitched in exactly the same way as before and it's now working OK. I did expect there to be an issue with adding my fillets on afterwards, but even they are working. So filed saved and move on. 🙂

I'm positive that it will be down to how I am working with this software and I have had to adapt the way I work to get the best out of it, but I like it and there are parts of it that make Catia V5 look vintage! 🙂

Thanks guys for your feedback.

Jason.

[krzy27]

Your post has led me to solve my problem. In fact, the fillet must be used after the stitch.
Thanks a lot.

[Jase77]

I'm happy to hear that.

It does seem to work better when stitching without fillets. It's still not ideal for what I am doing, but at least it is consistent.