I’m relatively new to Rhino and have been using it mainly for 3D printing. I’ve run into an issue that I can’t seem to resolve despite trying a few things and searching the forum.
I created two solid objects that share edges and are designed to fit together perfectly. My goal is to merge them into a single solid, but I’m having no luck. Here’s what I’ve already tried:
Boolean Union — the command runs but doesn’t produce a single merged solid
Join — doesn’t work either; the objects remain separate
Searched the forum but couldn’t find a solution that matched my situation
Both objects are closed polysurfaces (solids), and they were built to share faces/edges exactly. I’m not sure if the issue is with how the geometry overlaps, or if there’s a step I’m missing before running Boolean operations. Below I attach two views of the two solids. The one highlighted fits inside the opening of the other solid. I still need to add a few more things to it but i already got stuck here…
Any help or guidance would be really appreciated. Happy to share the file if that would help diagnose the problem.
many thanks to get back to me on this. Here is the file. The pieces that I was going to join originally got a little more detailed. The final piece is with the arrow on top. And there is a display of the original one. I was able to join everything else with boolean union… but this to closed solids don’t like each other.
Boolean union of coincident surfaces can be problematic - it is preferable to union items with a little overlap. Your surfaces are not quite a perfect match:
To join your two pieces (which I’ve coloured for ease of reference), explode them into surfaces, delete the convex blue surface and untrim the convex hole in the pink piece to replace it. Untrim the inner blue face (getting back to a cylinder) and delete any other blue faces. Use the cylinder to trim any surfaces that would otherwise be internal in the joined item, then use the remaining pink pieces to retrim the cylinder. Join everything you have left and you should end up with a single closed polysurface.
Hi Jeremy, thank you so much for your time and knowledge sharing. I’ll try now to do it step by step. Hopefully I’ll be able to achieve it. But I see, instead of trying to merge two solids I build it out from surfaces. I come from years using SKP and to for my brain to adapt it will take a little..
