Hi Jim, re: filleting - it's hard to say without examining the actual model closely but probably your fillet problem with trying to do those edges is due to this juncture over here where they all meet up:
So note that when you create a fillet the new fillet piece is going to trim away part of the existing model, and that actually leaves holes in the model at the ends of the trimmed away parts and the filleter has to try and figure out what to do with those holes.
For example in your case here trying to fillet this edge here:
Is going to try and produce a fillet piece that trims away some area to either side of that edge kind of like so:
How then would you want that corner juncture (that I have the arrow pointing to in the first screenshot above) to be formed after having the surfaces trimmed away by the new fillet getting inserted? It's not clear to me what kind of shape you would be hoping to have in that area. Most likely the filleter is not able to figure out any way to handle that area either.
> Any ideas on how to build it a different way that would
> lend itself to being filleted here?
It's not clear to me how you would like that juncture corner formed after it is done being filleted...
Here's another way to describe what makes it difficult - you've got an existing fillet going in one direction like this:
But then the new one you want to fillet is going to produce a fillet going in the opposite direction, like this:
How do you want the juncture between those 2 fillets going in opposite directions to be formed?
It could be possible to do some kind of low level surface modeling manipulation to that area to get the kind of shape that you want, you would do that by selecting those surfaces around that area and using Edit > Separate to break them apart from the main object, then you can do possibly work with those individual surfaces, doing some surface/surface filleting and maybe building some fill in pieces using some sweeps or something like that to get what you want, but you kind of need to know what you want first in order to have that work well.
- Michael
