Hi eric, so a cleaner way to get this done without a zillion little slivery intersections is to instead start with a big surface and then boolean away pieces.
So for example in your case one way to do that is to start with a sphere, and then draw a rectangle like this (note rectangle is only on one side of the center point to make array polar more simple rather than that "sticking out to both sides" type of thing):
Now do an Array circular to replicate it:
Select all the rectangles, and then do a boolean union to fuse them all together into one closed curve, like this:
In the 3D view it looks like this:
This is now all ready to go - in this case using boolean intersection is the easiest, that will keep the area that is inside the closed curve. If you wanted to do boolean difference, that is possible as well but you would have a bunch of separate "V" like curves for the cutters for that one to cut out wedges, rather than one closed curve like I have here.
Select the sphere, run boolean intersection, then select the closed curve, and it will give you this result:
Or as seen in 3D:
Now to hollow out the center draw another sphere and use boolean difference to remove it.
This process is much cleaner and more robust because it does not have so many little tiny slivery surfaces at shallow angles to one another.
I've attached the 3DM model file here with the curve and the sphere if you want to take a look.
- Michael
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