Trying to make these surfaces into a solid

[3dproteus]

Hi! I’m a beginner. I’m used to catia and solidworks to make parametric and solid based parts. I have a surface based project though so i’ve tried catia’s generative surface design but it’s too unnecessarily rigid and expensive for what i’m trying to accomplish. I want to recreate something in Rhino that I have scanned so that I can modify it and make several versions from the original.

Here is my model.
Silicone 3.3dm (2.5 MB)

So I need some help with:

• filling the gaps that are present -> to eventually be able to make a solid -> to create a cavity in a mold.
• also, ensuring that all surfaces are tangent where they meet (I think Rhino calls these kinks)

Thanks

[DiegoKrause]

you have some problems in thise areas:

in the top you have kinks there
and the patch you used at the bottom is not so good for that.
you can Untrim those surfaces with the option KeepTrimObjects= Yes
to have a copy of the trimmed edges. then you can delete those kinks and trim again:

for the lower part you can use SplitEdge first:

and then use BlendSrf with the top surfaces:

then, having a bit of gap, you can use BlendCrv to trim the excess and have a clean edge for later

with some curves you can make a couple of Sweep2

then you can uset NetworkSrf to make the last one:

[3dproteus]

Wow! Thank you very much!
I honestly didn’t think I would get such a quick answer!

I have learned a lot just by these explanations alone.

So now that I have better surfaces to work with, how could I go about making a solid?

Thanks again!

Samuel

[DiegoKrause]

joining both half you should have a solid.

[3dproteus]

Hi!
Thanks for the help!

I was practicing with an existing mesh, I spent hours to redoing the curves to fit the dimensions needed for my project but it never works, it makes really shitty surfaces…

[3dproteus]

Here is my file

Patte start.3dm (2.61 MB)

[DiegoKrause]

well, I think the model is too small, too close to the file tolerance, you have an absolute tolerance of 0.001 inches but the thickness is 0.26. most of the issues joining surfaces are there.
in therms of surface structure you have some troubles here, which lead to deform the Sweep2 or BlendSrf you want to make:

You can use RemoveKnot and some adjustments to get rid of those glitches. ( I would suggest to rebuild the entire surface and work with fewer control points).
Once edited or rebuilded, I would suggest to increase the distance for the last surface, to not force too much curvature on it.

also you can add a third curve in the middle to have more control: