OK, definately helps - also found a mistake I made upon embarking on this process. Apparently my shape that I had highlighted in my drawing isn't solid inside? When I went to extrude a shape onto it, I could then see inside the shape, leading me to believe that it is not a solid. Guess I have to go rework my shape to ensure it is a solid first and not a shell type object, then try overlaying a shape and extruding it.

I'll give it a few more tries and see what I can come up with.

Thanks again Michael.

Hi Ryan,

> Apparently my shape that I had highlighted in my drawing isn't
> solid inside?

Well, the way solids are defined is by a completely connected outside skin.

If you put the camera point inside of one it won't actually be literally filled with solid color inside of it, it just behaves that way as you cut it or work on it.


> When I went to extrude a shape onto it, I could then see inside
> the shape, leading me to believe that it is not a solid.

Well, those instructions that I posted about using Trim will temporarily break the solid into a non-solid, because Trim works by slicing the outer skin of the solid.

At the end of those steps you need to select the pieces and use the Join command to glue things back into a connected skin and then you will have a solid again after that.

So if you follow those steps it is actually normal that you will temporarily have a non-solid until the final join.


In v2 it is a lot easier to know if you are working on a solid or not because there is a new indicator that shows up in the upper-right corner of the screen that tells you what type of object is currently selected like is it a solid or a closed curve, etc...

- Michael

Micheal,

I figured out what I was doing wrong. When I was selecting the "face" of the extruded piece, I think I was clicking on the whole piece and deleting it, which left me with the big hole and not the extruded face I wanted. I realized if I click on it, then click on it again, it selects just that face, then only deletes that top piece and gives me the effect I'm after.

Chalk it up to still learning the software I guess?

I have some more playing around to do to really get comfortable with this aspect of the process.

Thanks again for the help, it really is invaluable as without it I'd spend hours of frustration trying to figure out what I'm doing!

Hi Ryan,

> I realized if I click on it, then click on it again, it selects
> just that face, then only deletes that top piece and gives
> me the effect I'm after.

Yeah it will take a little bit to get comfortable selecting sub objects on the second click like that.

You also can select edges for some kinds of operations in the same way, by a second click after the near an edge after the "whole object" has been selected by the first click.

But it does sound like you are figuring things out and making some rapid progress!

It gets easier as you spend more time on it.

- Michael