Can I break up an extrusion?

[wpflum]

I'm learning Solidworks on my own and am working with a copy of 2007. I'm trying to design a pinewood derby car to be milled out on a cnc mill. What I've done so far is create an extruded blank of a car and then added boxes to the top surface of the extrusion that I then filleted the corners of. Think marshmellows stacked on top of each other within the confines of the extruded top. I then added a line to connect the ends of the arcs on adjacent boxes so I could use the extruded cut feature to remove the material from the top to the bottom of the blank. So far what I have looks like 3 stacked marshmellows, I'm going for a 'Snowman' look for the car...don't ask ... What I need to do now is fillet the top edges all around the three marshmellow to make them look sort of round. My problem is that while I can fillet the sides I cannot select the lines between the stacked marshmellows, all I get is the entire face of the extrusion. Is there a way I can break up the single extrusion so I can fillet those lines or is there some other way I can set this up with what I already have to get those lines accessible??

Help!!

Bill

[mmckell]

have you tried creating each part (car & marshmallows) separately and adding them to an Assembly? you would create 4 separate parts (or 2 parts if all the marshmallows are going to end up identical) You can then mate and edit each part inside the assembly to get what you want. There is an option inside the Assembly to JOIN the parts and create 1 solid model if that is what you're trying to end up with. you can find instructions for the JOIN option in the help section. i could tell you but i find it better to learn this stuff from a hint - i'm mostly self taught myself.

good luck Bill

Mac

[wpflum]

Through trial and error I found out that I could put a plain through the 'junctions' of the marshmallows and then use the split feature to break the entire thing up into pieces. Then it was a simple thing to fillet all of the upper edges, not it kinda sorta resembles a snowman. I had to join the whole thing back together before sending it over to Gibbscam because it didn't seem to like it broken up. This is all academic since I couldn't get Mach3 to accept the toolpath properly, we had to carve up the cars by hand anyway

I'm going to keep trying do that next year I can have my daughters design the entire cars from scratch and then have the mill carve out the basic shape so they can finish them up by hand.

Now I just have to figure out why Mach3 abbreviates the tool path when I regen the path after hitting reset, that is a real pain since I was on the last stage of testing with a test blank in the jig. It started to cut out the basic shape and then stopped after a little bit. Looks like Mach3 is screwing up the toolpath but only when I press the reset button to jog the table or to just plain start the motors. AARRRGGGHHHHH.

Bill

[CarbonKevin]

I see you've already overcome your problem, but it sounds like the Split Line tool would have been ideal for you...

[wpflum]

I originally tried to use that but either I was doing it wrong, likely, or Solidworks didn't like it after I extruded the object so I couldn't get it to work. I really liked the split feature with the plains at least for this instance since I was working from an existing object, the pinewood derby blank, and basically removing everything that wasn't the car. I did it that way so I could keep the object constrained inside the blank. Probably a better way to do this but it worked for me.

Bill

[latheboy]

You could always just sketch the radi and do an extrude cut throught the part to creat your radius.
After reading the first post i was thinking of the split feature.

Pics or it never happened.

[wpflum]

I think I tried that and Solidworks didn't like it until I closed off the area with the additional line.

Do you know of any way to constrain a part without using an extruded blank to work from? If I had a way to define a work area that wouldn't let me build something outside of its envelope I wouldn't have to start with a block and remove pieces to get what i want I could start with a basic design and extrude up or out.

Bill