How do I combine “forms” into a solid shape?

I’m trying to make the solid shape shown in my attached screen shot. But the shape I have constructed seems to really be 3 disconnected “Forms” that don’t move or change together.

 

Form 3 is the edge surface.

Form 7 is the front surface.

Form 8 is the back surface.

 

I want to use this shape to make a boolean cut into another shape. So I want to make sure that the cutting shape is actually solid. And if it is broken into 3 separate forms, I’m pretty sure it isn’t solid.

Partized Object.jpg
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Comments

  • ShawnDriscollShawnDriscoll Posts: 375
    edited February 2018

    Practice with simpler objects first. Get used to merging vertices and triangulating, before doing your boolean cuts.

    Post edited by ShawnDriscoll on
  • lukon100lukon100 Posts: 803

    Thanks for your advice, shawndriscoll.

    However, I am confused about why you offer this advice. You do not make clear how your advice relates to my question.

    Is that relation one of the following?:

    1: You think I'm approaching my project wrong. So I need to back off, learn a lot more about Hexagon in general, before proceeding with my project.

    2: Those three forms cannot actually be combined into one solid object. So your advice will somehow help me make the same object in a different way that will make it solid.

    3: Something else.

  • I assumed you were already trying to weld the objects together into one solid object. The rest will make sense when you see odd cookie-cutter shapes being produced. YouTube has plenty of videos showing how to do the steps.

  • lukon100 said:

    I’m trying to make the solid shape shown in my attached screen shot. But the shape I have constructed seems to really be 3 disconnected “Forms” that don’t move or change together.

     

    Form 3 is the edge surface.

    Form 7 is the front surface.

    Form 8 is the back surface.

     

    I want to use this shape to make a boolean cut into another shape. So I want to make sure that the cutting shape is actually solid. And if it is broken into 3 separate forms, I’m pretty sure it isn’t solid.

    did you try an average weld? its in the vertex tab

  • lukon100lukon100 Posts: 803

    Thanks FirstBastion, I finally learned enough to know that the weld function is what I need here. And it worked. I got those forms welded together to make a solid shape.

    Unfortunately, the boolean cut I had hoped to make with this solid shape did not work. I tried like 4 or 5 times, but Hexagon crashed every time. I suppose this boolean cut is just to complicated for Hexagon to execute.

    I suppose shawndriscoll predicted this would fail from the start.

    Anyway, I've basically run out of patience with learning how to make my desired object. I figure that on the day I commit to using my special object, I'll just pay someone else to make it.

  • ShawnDriscollShawnDriscoll Posts: 375
    edited February 2018

    Just keep practicing boolean cutting using more simple geometries. That way, you will find a sweet spot that produces best triangulated objects from n-gon objects. N-gons is slang for facets that have more than 4 edges to them.

    The object that you are boolean cutting into needs to be hi-res. A dense mesh, rather than a single facet. Something like 100 squares by 100 squares across.

    Post edited by ShawnDriscoll on
  • lukon100lukon100 Posts: 803

    The object that you are boolean cutting into needs to be hi-res. A dense mesh, rather than a single facet. Something like 100 squares by 100 squares across.

    I suspected as much. And so I did make the object to be cut out of lots of squares. I invisioned that the boolean cut would work better if it had plenty of verticies available and close by every face edge of the cutting object.

     

  • The trick is how to tessellate the flat surface of your cookie-cutter object. That is one huge n-gon, otherwise.

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