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There are lots of reasons why models imported in SolidWorks from IGES, STEP or Parasolid files have topological errors. The simplest analogy I can make is that the various CAD products used for creating geometry speak different languages and, in order to understand each other, they need translators. These translators are the neutral formats mentioned before. That being said, whenever you get a middleman in the communication chain, bits of information could be lost and as a result you get topological errors like: gaps in the body self intersecting faces faces with more than one closed contour faces that are piercing the solid body Once the errors are identified they need to be repaired before using the model for anything else. In this series of articles,…
Alin’s SW2013 Pick of the Day – Conjuring a Solid Out of Thin Air with the Intersect Tool
People who have seen it in action say that the Intersect Tool is a Game Changer. Imagine you take existing surface bodies, solid bodies and even planes and throw them in a boiling pot. Let them intersect themselves for a while (about half a second), then pick and choose whatever pieces or combination of pieces you need. The result is spectacular: one or more solid bodies created very fast. Once you master this new command, you will find out that your feature tree becomes quite a bit shorter! Intersect can replace whole clusters of features like: Split, Combine Add, Combine Subtract, Combine Common, Trim, Copy Bodies, Delete Bodies, Cut with Surface or Replace Face. In this video, I am just playing with the Intersect Tool. Watch…