Hi Larry,
I have heard of that show but it's a bit too far for me to visit!
I like inches, it's an age thing. It's what I learnt at school. I can do metric but find it harder to visualise.
I have sent quite a few castings to the US for other engines and imperial seems prefered there by model engineers.

good work David !!!

I thought I was out of the woods but that problem of sections disappearing as returned. Aaaaaaah!
I have completed the blending and realise that I missed out some cutouts in the body of the model.
There are 4 cutouts. I have overcome the 2 lower ones by removing a rectangular shape and plugging it with an extruded section. The cutout then comes out of the replaced part.
The top 2 cutouts however are on a curved section so the same technique won't work. It's the yellow part that has to be removed.
Is there a way to trim the yellow part flush to the curved surface it is intersecting?

I had not tried that tool before but the surface I need to match to is made up of 2 surfaces blended together and the selection tool will only allow me select one or the other.

The "Remove Feature" (same palette as "Match Face") tool is a very handy for de-featuring or removing features and does an incredibly good (meaning clean) job of it.

If I have understood [URL="http://resilientmodeling.com"]this site[/URL] correctly, blending takes up more memory than other processes. They advise that you first build your model's solid structure, add webs and supports and then holes. The blends are added as the final additions to the model.

It is worth spending a couple of hours going through one of the sets of videos. None of them are directly applicable to ViaCAD/Shark but the should;d give you an insight into how to construct more robust models.

David - looking around your model - I can see any number of dubious intersections. Any one or several of these could be invalidating your model.

You need clean geometry - and whilst you probably think starting again would be a huge pain in the ass - I would almost always construct a second time in a fraction of the time - to a far cleaner solution - as a matter of course.

Such a geometric part should be fairly easily rationalised into primary and secondary solids, unioned and subtracted - in logical order - to construct the mass you need.

Always save multiple versions as you go - so it's easy to flip back an hour or so - and try a different approach.

Then, as Bill suggested, blends always come last - and 'blend order' is important too. Again prioritise - what is your primary fillet ... and what runs into it ... and into that ... and so on.

Always always - before you start blending - save your model as 'xxx_pre-blend.vcd'. I can guarantee you will always need this raw state again.

Logic in your construction - just as if you were building it in the workshop - will lead you to a clean part (sans fillets) - that you'll then be able to adjust any detail you like at will.

Sorry - I don't want to put you on a downer - but I'd recommend taking what you've learned here ... and starting afresh - to produce a super-clean solid - validating as you go so as to avoid compounded issues.

Hope that helps,

If not - send your complaints / sense of morbid disappointment / death threats to Bill

: )

Jol

Hi David

I spent several hours yesterday attempting to repair this file. I've got some new repair tools coming in PowerPack I wanted to test. Unfortunately I tried all my bag of tricks and could not repair this part. There are some overlapping faces that cause problems when repairing. As Jol suggested, you may want to every once in a while validate your part with Verify:Check Object.

If you find an operation that repeatedly raises issues in Verify:Check Object, let me know.

Tim

>>So Check object will highlight errors if I check as I go along.
Yes, it is the first thing I do when I have a modeling problem. This is a very rigorous check of geometry and topology.

>>If an error shows can it be located or is it easier to just go back to a
Check Object will often show a vertex location. You can write down the values and create a Point entity to isolate the area.

Attached is an image of potential problem areas in your part. There are three solids that are overlapped into the solid. This may cause solid modeling operations to fail as it does not form a unique closed volume. Plus there appears to be a blend issue where the two "+" symbols are located.

Tim

Hi Bill,
I had a look at the videos and they were very helpful. Thanks for the link.