Had a problem with doing a Boolean cut on simple beam solids failing... Was looking at the underlying structure of the beams and they were very complex and couldn't figure out why..... Tried a few different things and ended up re-creating them to get the Boolean to work.......

I have a workflow where I use a lot of existing curves from the model to do cuts instead of just making a new simple curve. This can have the adverse affect of having a simple "beam" have a very complex underlying structure... Shrink actually had an adverse effect in making some of the surfaces from it malformed and leaving "underlying surface points" floating way out in space where nothing really belonged....