This may just be "news" to me, but I was struggling today with making a complex solid cutter, which I would use to cut the required shapes into a model I was working on.

Now this is one of those times where it is easy to make the entire surface that you don't want but difficult to make its mate.

A flash of blinding insight shone all around my Dodge truck as I was motoring down a dark country road :D A voice in my head said "Wherefore dost thou not use thy easy-to-make-surface to first form thy difficult cutter, and then turn about and then thou canst use thy newly formed cutter as was thine intent?"

Simple enough. I'm getting quite a kick out of learning solid modelling. It is a different way of thinking from what I was used to, but its fun trying something new.

I wish had time to do some 3-D modeling, I hate drwing in 2-d all day. :( OOh BTW stay Away from the light, you see a light it could be a train or somthing worse. :D

Hey Murray,

Show us a picture of what you're talking about.

Ken

It's also handy to"copy to clipboard" your solid, then blank all and paste, rename the current layer and blank so you have a copy of a solid on a different layer. They're handy to use after a solid cutter or difference operation that leaves you with "parts" that you will use later.

I have problems sometimes getting the exact result with only one solid modification operation. Sometimes need to create bits and pieces and reassemble to get the surfaces neccesary for NC generation.

A common procedure for me is to use solid cutter to get a surface, then use that surface in a difference operation to get the final result. Or intersection then explode to grab the surface element I am after to use in another operation. Can't be done without one or more clones.

Keith,
There is a new feature in XP that goes along with what you are saying about making a copy to a different layer.
It's under the move/translate button, it now has "make a copy"(and number from 1 to 99) and "copy to layer (you can now move your copy to a different layer) and "enable scale" (you can scale to different size).
This is really slick as you don't need to copy to clipboard or blank anything.
Only the "copy to layer" is new to XP the other two are in Mill 2000.