"Not a Solid" ?
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When modelling roofing components in many occasions I've tried to trim or subtract common roofing cuts only to be told that one of the components is 'not a solid'. I've been careful in creating the component and calling it 'rafter' or 'hip' etc and making it a component. Why is now 'not a solid'??
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Hi Tony,
Does it have volume?
If SU says its not solid then there is a good chance you've a hole somewhere.
Thomthom's Solid Inspector is a great tool to locate holes. I think TIG has something similar.
Some images would help too!
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If a group or component instance is a 'solid' and you select it then it says 'Solid' in the header of Entity Info...
A 'solid' is a 3d form where all of its edges have two faces - no more and no fewer.
So if you have a form with unfaced edges, internal-partitions, 'flaps', 'holes' [no matter how tiny] etc it will fail in 'solid' operations. Nothing but edges/faces are allowed.
Thomthom's 'SolidInspector' tool will highlight any non-solid problems.
There are then several tools to resolve the non-solidity issues - e.g. my 'SolidSolver' tool [which only works on a group, so for a component edit your component, group all of its contents, run the tool on that group to fix it and finally explode the group when done]...
Not all non-solid are automatically 'fixable' - but most are... -
I've found that SU has rather strange ideas as to what constitutes a solid. For instance, if you draw a simple cube then subdivide its faces, then P/P a few of them to produce a 'greeble' effect, it will refuse to accept that this is a solid...even though it clearly has no holes in it. It may have a few awkward intersections, but no holes.
You can't, for instance, offset a copy of such a figure and make an outer shell from the result. -
Indeed, any edges or lines that are not needed to build the solid make that object to not be detected as solid.
Example: subdivided face, guide point/line, stray edge, hole, multiple faces (overlapped), inner faces ...all this can make a C/G to not be detected as SOLID.
But, there is a plugin than offers visual clues to detect where the problem is. It's called Solid Inspector.
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Hi
I've been testing the new suSolid.rb http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=41289&p=367657&hilit=suSolid#p365992 and I find it's really powerful and fast.
there's are free and low cost versions.I've only used the full version on a mac with SU-pro- but it's worth a play...
john
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