Hi All,
Apologies, noob here. Having a problem with a tiered cake stand (exciting eh?!) I’ve been designing. I’ve created the 5 tiers, spaced them evenly and have the upright stands in place that slot together in a criss cross and go up through each of the tiers. I now just need to subtract the uprights from the circular tiers to leave cross shaped holes. I can do this with one of the stands but that then leaves me with a tier that is no longer a solid. Solid inspector flags the problems but isn’t able to automatically resolve them. Help!
Any ideas/solutions gratefully received as I am tearing my hair out!
Cheers
Ben
Can you share the file with us or attach a few screenshots?
I would use Jim’s Trim and Keep extension from the Sketchucation Store. It would make very quick work of it. Hang on and I’ll make a thing to show that.
Amazing, thank you!
Hi DaveR
Just tried Trim and Keep but having a problem with a new error - ‘Selection not Manifold’ so looks like my elements aren’t solids. Not sure how to tackle that. Arg!
First clean up the shapes so they are solids. I’ve been cleaning up your model to make this work right.
Ah I see. You’re a star, thank you. Sorry for the hassle. Clearly the next stage in my learning - cleaning up models! Appreciate your help so much.
If you were my student I would be harping on you to make very clean models with all components showing as solids whether you need to use Solid Tools or not. 
Some people will tell you that it takes too much time to do that but it takes much less time to do clean modeling from the beginning than it does to repair things later to make it all workable.
Here’s a quick grab of running Trim and Keep. I cut all the tiers but only copied three of them so you could easily see the holes being cut. One thing I did was modify the uprights so they don’t have the slots in them yet. With the slots there, the holes cut by Trim and Keep can be a problem.
Are you planning to make this thing? If so, I would advise you to make the edges where the tiers fit vertical instead of angled.
That’s brilliant thank you. It’s definitely a lesson learned. I am indeed planning to make this thing. Its a bit of a conundrum because I want the tiers to sit neatly without gaps so having the gaps in the tiers vertical would leave a gap against the sloped stands. I thought having the slots might help stability but the slope is still going to be an issue if I make the slots vertical. I may be over engineering this thing!!
I guess I could put vertical shoulders where the stands pass through the tiers
That’s what I would do: put a triangular notch in the edge of the sloping support where each tier is supposed to rest. That will also give the tiers more positive support.
I think I’ll give that a go. Many thanks to both of you. Steep learning curve ahead!!! Still, only been using it for a couple of hours this week so it’s early days
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