OK, I now have a part I am happy with - how do I get it watertight for 3D printing?

It's composed of:

- two solids from the STEP part I imported
- the eight networks

I've tried:

- joining the networks together
- separating the solids into surfaces and then joining those surfaces with the networks (seems doing that converts the surfaces back into the two solids)
- separating the solids into surfaces, selecting only all of the surfaces and then exporting

Any ideas what the steps are? Thanks, Andy

Hi Andy, you generally would use the Edit > Join command to glue surfaces together to make a solid.

However, you have some prep work to do first, there are some internal surfaces you need to delete first, for example if I hide this part:



You can see that there is a face on the inside of everything here:



There's also a similar one on the other side:



The Join command will join "naked edges" to other naked edges. A "naked edge" is an edge that belongs to only one face instead of being joined between 2 faces.

Your network surfaces have naked edges so they are ready to join. The other parts where you want to join them into do not have naked edges, they will once you delete those internal surfaces.

- Michael

Deleted

So yes you are super close to being finished there. You just need to delete the 2 faces on the inside that I showed above, then you can select everything and do Edit > Join and have a solid so it's ready to be sent for printing.

If the object type indicator here shows says it's a "surface" or "joined srf" then that means there is some opening in it that still needs to be closed off for it to be watertight. If it says solid then there aren't any naked edges so it's watertight:



- Michael

Great, thanks! Andy

Turned out great Andy!

- Michael