Solid Inspector shouldn’t be removing edges that make the object less watertight. It might remove internal edges that support internal faces but the goal is to wind up with every edge in the object supporting exactly two face.
I’m not what exactly is going pear shaped in your process but clearly there is something.
Finally got the 4.0m oar shaft done and solid. All I need to do now is make a 3D cutting file…
Thanks a lot for all your help!
Topher.
Final4.0m6.2.25.skp (33.8 KB)
Nice. Don’t foregt to scale it down to the desired 4m length. An easy way to do that is to draw an edge with the Line tool that is 4000m long. Then measure it with the Tape Measure tool making sure you click at each end. Type 4 and press Enter. Then agree to resizing the model.
Thanks Dave, I think what happened was earlier I changed the units to metres but while making the model the readout changed from m to mm so from then on I entered measurements as the number of mm plus three zeros. Perhaps I was operating at million times scale? Anyway at the end I reduced scale by using a scale factor of 0.001 but perhaps that was still 1000 times too big. Anyway I have done what you suggested and it’s now 4m long. Phew.
My son in law confirms he has VCarve Pro which apparently accepts .skp and .stl files, so we will give it a try on Thursday. One of the things we have to figure out is how to split the cutting task into two, to fit the 4m plank into his 8ftx4ft router bed twice, with room to overhang the workpiece from the router bed only at one end of the machine. In other words we will have to rotate the workpiece end for end.
Wish us luck!
Best wishes, Topher.
Ive been lurking on this post. Fascinating discussion. Thank you both for helping me to learn.
Never would have guessed that the tape measure tool could also be used as a scaling tool.