I’ve imported them into another project as components and now I want to start cutting them to various lengths, but the trim tool says it is not a solid object.
Can anyone tell me how to cut them? I stretched them out to the lengths they are sold in with the push/pull tool but now the same tool does not work to push them to shorter lengths.
One main problem is that every one of your components is nested. You should learn to use Outliner. It’s very useful for this sort of thing. There are also holes in the component. Solid Inspector2, available from the Extension Warehouse is also very useful.
The solid tools will only work on what are “solid” objects. Make the components solid and the tool will work . Note Daves post about them being nested, they do have to be in the same context, (either both nested together in the same context, or both not nested)
“Think about what you do, before you do it”
The structure of nesting will give you a headache if you don’t make it thoughtfully . If it were me I’d have each part a component (not nested), Then select them all and make them a component, called “something assembly”. The components are now in the same context only one level deep, edit the “something assembly” component and you have access to all of the concerned components with the solid tools.(Provided they are solid, of course).
Thinking on, leads me to the other problem you will encounter when the trim tool does work.
The native trim tool executed on a component, will indeed trim the component. But, it will make it into a group called “difference” and will become disconnected from any other instances of the component in the model. They will not be trimmed, and things get a bit complicated.
So, I recommend you install “Trim and Keep” from the Sketchucation plugin store.
It’s the same function, however, when executed on a component the component stays a component, keeps the name and all other instances in the model are changed according to normal component behaviour.
I hope I’m not sidetracking, but thought this could be useful.
FWIW, I’ve cleaned up your model and made the components solid. Ian’s suggestion of Trim and Keep is a good but as your model stands now, all those channel pieces are instances of the same component. If you trim one, they’ll get the same trimming. You need to be discerning about this and use Make Unique to separate some instances from others so they don’t all get a miter cut on the ends, for example.
@Catracho If you want several to be the same unique components , use shift/select to select multiple then make unique to keep them connected to each other. So you don’t end up with different instances, that could be the same.
