back on my ship modelling again! I have made a hull but it has become joined surfaces rather than a solid. I am at a loss how to fill it in so I can chop out parts.

I have tried booleaning a solid on, but it just turns the solid into a joined surfaces rather than the other way around!

Thanks!

Hi Gord, there is a script here that you can set up on a shortcut key which will select naked edges:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6051.2

That will highlight the areas where there is an edge that belongs to only one surface instead of being joined between 2 surfaces. Any naked edges will prevent the object from being a solid.

So then it's a matter of zooming into those areas and investigating why they are not joined and repairing them as needed.

- Michael

Hi Gord, also some of the naked edges are very tiny, those may be difficult to see when they are selected. There is a plug-in here that can help with that, it creates a point object at the start of selected curves:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5288.21

But even after naked edges are patched up you still may have some problems if you try to do a boolean that cuts through an areas with little tiny microstructures in it.

- Michael

You have absolutly no Name By Object, no selection by Color...that don't help for Hide something!

Else Michael was so speed :)

Hi Gord, I've attached a version here that has been tuned up to be a solid now. I did that by identifying the problem spots using the select naked edges and MarkCurveStart scripts as mentioned above. There were a couple areas where a hole just needed to be filled in using either Network or Loft, but there were also some spots where an edge had gotten compressed down to a single point and those are more difficult to deal with. It's a pretty tricky process that involves untrimming surfaces around problem areas and then retrimming them. There is an object repair tutorial here if you want some more details:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=446.17

3DM file is attached. I think you should be ok to do booleans on it now:




You may run into some problems if the boolean tries to cut through an area that has some of the tiny slivery pieces, like probably a cut that has to make an intersection through this area may be difficult to do:



Hope this helps though!

- Michael