A component (or a group) is not a solid, so you can’t perform solid operations with/on them. I’m curious how people handle this situation. The case that’s driving me to post this question is that I wish to trim one component with another, where solid 1 (in the tool’s terms) contains nested components. One strategy would be to explode the component, perform the operation, then recreate the component (or perhaps delete all the elements and reinsert the component. A second strategy would be to open the component for editing, copy the inner component that I want to use as the trim tool, close the outer component, paste in place, and do a subtract instead of a trim.
It seems there should be an easier way that perhaps I’m missing.
How about uploading the model so we can see exactly what you are doing?
If it was me, I would first look at whether the nesting is actually necessary and perhaps explode the top level component. If it was necessary, I would paste the cutting component into the parent component so it is in the same context as the component that needs to be trimmed.
Here’s the model for a small stool. The ends are nested components because that’s the logical structure.
This was just a rough sketch, so the organization and naming of components is less than ideal. And there are two copies of the nested end component because I used the explode/create component approach to trimming the aprons. v2.skp (113.6 KB)
I agree however I would have waited until later to nest those components.
Is it the stretcher you are wanting to trim at this point? If so, and if you are reluctant to un-nest the end frames, I would copy the center component out of each nest and past them in place with the stretcher. Then you could do the trimming with them. Or Subtract instead since you won’t need those copies.
Here I copied the end frames and the stretcher component away from the stool, exploded the end frame copies and subtracted the verticals from the stretcher.
Thanks for that demo.
I was looking at some other info about components and was reminded about the Outliner window, which I don’t typically use. I can move the trimming solid from the nested component to the top level context where the stretcher resides, do the trim, and then it move it back into the nested component, which allows the operations to occur “in place”.
Yes. You could do that in Outliner. It amounts to the same thing as cutting the component and then pasting it in place outside the parent. Many ways to skin the cat.
I tend to use these rules:
‘There are two container types (Group and Component)’
‘It is considered bad modeling if you have raw geometry’
‘Components can be saved as and reloaded with Models’
Which leads to?
‘The nested container inside a component should be a group’
Then there are more:
‘A Group is a Component which is made unique’
‘A component has two sets of attributes, the definition set and instance set’
I would like to have another group-container type (eg. Assembly) which can act as a holder for parts (components) and have Advanced Attributes, just like components have.
So normal group for edges and faces, Assembly for ‘parts’ .
