I’ve created a simple cube … square polygon 24" x 24", then extruded 24’.
I select “Outer Shell” from tools and highlight my cube … nothing happens.
I then made the cube a group, selected outer shell and then clicked on cube … I’m told that it is not a solid.
So:
How does one make a solid … I have a simple cube with each of the 6 faces showing a surface … why would this not be a solid?
How does one use the outside shell tool?
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the point of outer shell is to combine solid groups…
a singular solid group is already an outer shell, as SU is a surface modeller…
it must have stray geometry to not be solid…
try again and make the new cube a group, then move a copy slightly offset…
select both and try outer shell…
john
In SketchUp only a Group or Component can be a solid. If you checked Entity Info after creating a Group from your cube, it should already have been designated as a solid. If it wasn’t, that suggests maybe you didn’t select all of the geometry of the cube (triple-click on a face) before making the Group.
Outer shell requires two solids to create the shell. You select the first solid either before or after activating the tool then select a second solid you want included within the shell (the cursor will be a little 1 if you need to select the first solid and a little 2 if you need to select the second). After the first operation, the result remains selected so you can continue adding more.
Got it … I didn’t understand “Outer Shell” … I thought that it would take a solid and create a new solid inside at some offset distance, i.e. creating a “shell”.
I found a plug-in that does this … so all is good.
Thanks for the quick reply!
Yeah, what outer shell does is to take two existing solids and create a new one that “wraps” their combined outer surfaces and eliminates any interior geometry if they overlap. Glad you found something that works for what you wanted.