Convert unordered faces to solid

Convert a surface consisting of unordered 3dface entities into a 3d solid by extrusion.

Access methods

8 Toolbar:

8 Menu: ComputationalCAD † Convert faces to solid

7 Command entry: CC:FACES:TOSOLID

Dialog

Select faces:
Select the 3dfaces defining the surface.

Specify reference plane [Wcs/Ucs/3Point]:
Specify the extrusion reference plane. Default is <Wcs>.

Extrusion height in actual Z:
Specify the extrusion height with respect to the global z-axis. Default is <-1>.

Minimum projected edge length:
Specify the minimum length of the projection of the faces onto the reference plane. Default is <0.01>.

Union solids [Yes/No]:
Select if the extruded solids shall be united. Default is <Yes>.

Summary

This method extrudes each face in z-direction and unites the resulting solids. In order to do this, the projection of the input faces onto the reference plane must not be degenerate. In order to achieve this, the projected faces will be healed so that no projected edge will be shorter than specified.

Converting faces to solids allows for numerous advanced operations, including Boolean operations and mass property computation. While extrusion is computationally not costive, AutoCAD solids are not optimized for Boolean union operation performance of tens or hundreds of thousands of sub-entities. Thus, being theoretically unbound in the number of input faces, this method does practically not support extremely large input with the unite solids option. 5000 to 10000 faces may be united in about a minute.

Example

Figure 24: Rendered view on two solids build from 107k faces