Filling up voids: when mating no longer helps

[jpolihro]

Dear All,

I am trying to fill up the void seen in the pictures. The void is between 2 solids which are mated
and are constrained so the void can't be filled by rotation of one of the bodies.
The crack is long and narrow and I don't have an idea how to "grow" one of the solids into the other.

Filling surfaces and forming a closed volume also seems quite difficult to me (next to impossible).

Perhaps someone can help here (having in mind I am quite new to SolidWorks).

 

[jpolihro]

Image 2

 

[jpolihro]

Image 3

 

[jpolihro]

Image 4

 

[jpolihro]

Image 5

 

[rfus]

Hey Jpolihro,

I remember your last post, filling up cracks between solids, where there where like 20 posts from everyone here trying to help, and then you replied that you had learned how to use an assembly. Point being, that everyone here wants to help, but it does appear that you need to spend a little more time becoming familiar with the software. Go through all the tutorials and the help. Its the end of the day here, so I will try and answer your question, but your pictures and questions do show you to be a greenhorn, and I don't know where to begin. You are asking about fills and mates and how to fill up cracks, and its kind of confusing for those here to figure out what you are doing.

I don't even know where to start. Do you understand all the ways you can mate. Do you know the difference between top down design and bottom up design. Do you know how to edit a part in context of an assembly. Look into this stuff.

Also, if you are zooming way in to find little cracks and gaps and corners sticking out, your are not constraining your sketches correctly, or you are not desiging your parts to match one another, or you are not mating correctly.

If you want, post your file, and I'm sure a few here will play around with it.

If you want to edit one part in context to another, use edit part, after clicking on the part in the assembly. Note that you can chage a part and eliminate features you mate with, and you can reference the geometry of the other part, and you can begin to create circular references.

rfus

 

[NomLaser]

Without being able to rotate it and being able to see geometry and mates it is going to be very difficult to find a solution on this side of the screen

 

[jpolihro]

My apologies.
The pictures above are of 2 solid bodies. They were already mated - a planar face on solid1 is constrained to be coincident with a planar face on solid2. This is the only constraint, but once enforced, it only allows the 2 bodies to slide parallel to the plane of the coincident faces.

My 2 solids are (slightly) flawed, hence the void between them. Unfortunately, it will be quite hard to correct the flaw and this is why I am trying to solicit the opinions of knowledgeable people on how to fill the unwanted void.

 

[rollupswx]

My 2 solids are (slightly) flawed, hence the void between them. Unfortunately, it will be quite hard to correct the flaw

Why create flawed geometry? Why assume that it would be easier to smudge flawed geometry than it would be to simply go back and do it correclty. I'm betting if you post the original files someone will show you a much better way of solving the problem.

 

[jpolihro]

I tried to build a simple part file which illustrates the problem. I am trying to connect the ends of the ring.

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

Next time you post multiple images, please zip them together first.

The images show some strange distortion adjacent to the ends. That may be creating extra problems for you, but without seeing the actual parts its impossible to tell what you are doing.

In the uploaded solid part, what are you trying to connect the ends of the ring to another part, or to each other?

Why are you inserting the part into a part? There is nothing wrong with doing that, I'm just curious.

 

[MadMango]

It might also help if you could show your Feature Manager tree, fully expanded. That might offer up some clues.

 

[ctopher]

Was the geometry imported from another software? Were they .igs, stl, dxf or ??

Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 3.1
AutoCAD 08
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
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[rollupswx]

I tried to build a simple part file which illustrates the problem.

Where is the feature history tree? It should be trivially easy to close this part - I suspect it doesn't really illustrate your problem at all. Roll up the feature history tree in the original parts and save. (this will result in a smaller file size) Put the parts in a folder and right click on the folder and select Send to Compressed (zipped) Folder (this will result in an even smaller file size). Attach the resulting *.zip file here. rollupswx

 

[rfus]

The feature to connect one end of the ring to the other end of the ring in your file is a loft.

 

[jpolihro]

Wow, thank you for the so many replies. I'd like to post the assembly and am sure people will resolve the problem I have. The thing of it is - the designs do not belong to me only and I have to keep them confidential (sorry, I know this is no fun). Anyways, this work is a part of a multidisciplinary project which means I have to get involved in things I don't understand well (solid modeling is one of those).

The parts I have to join come from custom curves which are used to form sweep surfaces, which are then used to loft solid bodies. Two of these bodies need to be joined in two different places. I used mating to force coincident face constraint in one of the joining places. The other joining place is seen in the images above (I will zip those in a single zip folder in the future). There is a crack, a void betw. the 2 parts. I can rebuild the geometry to avoid this crack, but this will involve reprogramming of the model and is a major pain. Besides, I need to learn how to fill up high-aspect ratio voids. Hence my question and thanks to all who know SolidWorks well and are willing to lend a helping hand.

 

[jpolihro]

Once ready, the assembly will be run in a CFD solver and its imperfections (like the crack above) have no bearing on the main phenomenon we are simulating. But they do mess up the mesh, which I need to run the solver.

Thanks to rfus for suggesting the loft between the 2 mismatched faces. I will try this one for sure. Though, I don't know how to select the mismatched faces when the crack between them is long and narrow, as in the pictures above.
Again, this has to be a loft between 2 planar faces. Face1 is on part1; face2 is on part2.

Regards.