Solid Tools odd behaviour
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I have been using solid tools quite often and noticed a few quirks. 1: when you submit a component to a solid operation it stops being a component and becomes a group. 2: besides that, it is moved to Layer 0. does it have to be like that? can't components remain so and on their original layer?
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Edson, I had the same comments back at 3D Basecamp. I talked with several of the Google folks about it. They were going to talk to the guy who developed the tools although I never heard back about why they are like this. In all honesty for my workflow, this makes the Solid Tools less than ideal in many cases. At this point we're stuck with that behavior.
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@dave r said:
In all honesty for my workflow, this makes the Solid Tools less than ideal in many cases.
To be honest, I have never even used it yet (unless to try out when it was new).
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Except in cases where the clean up after a conventional intersect operation would take a long time, I prefer to use Intersect. The example I used with the Google guys was a table drawn with separate parts like I always draw them. I would make a leg component, copy and flip it for the other three legs. Then draw the aprons and stretchers between them. Once the model look right, I'll go back and insert the joinery. I could draw the tenons on the ends of the aprons and use Subtract to cut the adjoining mortise. Of course that converts the leg to a group and the mortises are not cut on the other legs. If I want to maintain the related nature of the legs, I have to make the group back into a component with a new name and then replace the other leg components with the new name. If I want to use the original name I'll purge the In Model components library and then rename the new leg component to the original name.
Or, I could open one leg component for editing, trace the base of the tenon with the Rectangle tool, push the inside in and have mortises in all four legs.
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