Solidify And Surfacing

[camilia]

Hi All
I am a CATIA user for several years but for some customers I have to work now with Creo ... I need some desperate help ...
I am trying to solidify set of quilts (closed) into a solid .. like a balloon ... but when I select my quilt and go to Edit, the solidify option is disable, which means perhaps my quilts don't form a closed pattern, so? If true is there a way to see where I have an opening like in a quite complex surfaces....
HELP PLZ...

 

[bowlofnoodle]

You need to merge all the surfaces first before you can solidify.

Select the surfaces, select merge in editing group. Then select the merged feature and solidify.

 

[moldman]

You will know you have an enclosed quilt if you see no red edges - they should all be blue. If you see red, that's where the problem is. It's not always easy depending on the complexity of the enclosed form.

 

[camilia]

Of course I merged them to solidify but when I select the final Merged feature and go to Edit ...the solidify is disable...means merge isn't closed feature, how I can be sure that a merge is closed or not ..Moldman I didn't completely get, can you please elaborate?

 

[moldman]

The easiest way to look at surfaces to see if they are enclosed is to put the solid geometry on a layer and hide it. Do the same with any other surfaces not connected with the problem. Now, look at the edges of the individual surfaces in your enclosed (hopefully) quilt. They will be either blue or a pinkish red. If they are pinkish red, that's where the problem is. In an enclosed quilt, all edges will be blue.

Let me qualify that I'm on WF4. I'm assuming that they didn't decide to change the color that the edges appear since then. They have been the same color since version 16.

 

[krow72]

The Creo standard color for surfaces are magenta for inner quilt edges (merged edges) and yellow for outer quilt edges (unmerged edges). You are looking for the yellow edges, that is your problem area. What I do is go into my system colors/geometry and change the inner quilt edge color to the same color as my background and that will only show the outer quilt edges on the screen. After I have fixed the problem, I change the color back to magenta. Hope this helps.

 

[spidernate]

If you are selecting one quilt, the fact that it is open or closed is irrelevant. An open quilt would invoke Creo to respond with an arrow to indicate which side of the quilt you are intending to use. There is something else going on.

 

[dgs]

Lots of info in here, one thing that may be throwing you is Creo's hierarchy of items. Selecting a feature in the tree may not allow you to solidify, you need to select the quilt. A quilt is just like you'd think of Grandma's quilt - a network of individual surfaces merged together. It's in some ways a higher lever than a feature. A feature may create a quilt, but a quilt can also be made from a number other quilts from a variety of surface features, merged together.

You can select the quilt by setting your smart filter in the lower right to "quilts" and selecting it on screen.

If that still won't solidify, you likely have a hole somewhere. An easy way to find it is to create another surface that runs through the middle of the existing quilt. An extruded straight line usually works well. Merge that with the existing quilt, keeping one side or the other,m it doesn't matter which. Now try to solidify that. If that will solidify, the problem area is in the other half. Move your middle surface toward the side you removed until the solidify fails. The point where it fails is where the open section is.

Good luck!