Hi simba,

> with one exception it would be best for me if I could set "solid at all times" in
> combination with sweep and blend and work with booleans. Is that possible?

It's possible to generate a solid directly from a sweep if the profile you are sweeping is a closed planar profile curve. There is a "Cap ends" option that by default is one that will generate a solid sweep object with planar end caps on it.

Not every kind of model is amenable to working in that way though, if you have more fancy swooping surfaces as part of the model, it becomes more likely that you'll end up working at an individual surface level. When you work at that level you will need to use Edit > Join to glue the surfaces together to form a solid. If it is possible to do so it can be more convenient to work with solids earlier on in the modeling process.


> Some of my 'boolean union' attempts lead nowhere after 15+ minutes processing time in order
> to create a solid part for machining purposes (on a current i7 with 32GB Ram).

If you can post an example file where you're having that problem I'll take a look at it and try to give some advice.

One thing is that the boolean operations are mainly meant for cutting objects with one another, they try to intersect surfaces with each other and remove material. If you have all surfaces that are touching edge-to-edge and you don't need any material to be removed, you should use Edit > Join instead of boolean union to glue the pieces together. Join does not attempt to intersect pieces with each other or remove any material, it only tries to glue edges to other edges.

- Michael