thicken irregular surface

[Anonymous]

 Hi everyone,

I was trying to thicken the surface of attached model which consists of tons of small surfaces. I tried to convert each independent surface into a freeform and then do thicken towards outside. However, some gaps between surfaces occurred due to the enlarged overall surface and the stitch function didn't work well in fixing these gaps because the edges aren't always in a loop. I also tried to combine all surfaces together then do as described above. However, the surfaces appeared as a whole at first but later became separate again in freeform. Does anyone have any idea on how to do that with Inventor or any other software?

Thank you so much! 

[TheCADWhisperer]

No Inventor model file Attached?

[johnsonshiue · Accepted solution]

Hi! The model looks like a mesh converted B-rep part. And, you would like to hollow the body. I don't believe there is a good workflow to do that in Inventor. You will be better off importing the mesh file into Autodesk Mesh Mixer (free download at www.meshmixer.com). There is a command to thicken the mesh.

At the moment, Inventor has fairly limited mesh modeling ability, because it is a primary Brep modeling CAD system. Mesh vertices, edges, and faces (regardless of converting to Brep or not) do not carry any meaningful design intent or parametric relationship.

Many thanks!

[Anonymous]

Thank you!