Expected behaviour when using subtract with an stl?

Need help? We are here.
1

Hi,

I was trying to reverse engineer a stl model to get a handle on tolerances for a raspberry pi case that clicks together. I imported the stl of the pi case (I understand that we can’t model stl directly) and then I created a cube above the stl. The cube is fully editable at this point (i.e can extrude individual faces etc). I lowered the cube onto the stl model so that they intersected and I removed the stl profile from the cube thereby leaving me with the inverse of the feature I’m trying to understand. This all worked as expected.

However, when I tried to take measurements from the cube, it behaves like it would with an stl model. No individual sides can be selected (a click on a face selects the whole cube) and no edges can be measured. It feels like the shapr generated cube has inherited the properties of the stl model.

Is this as expected? I expected to be able to manipulate and measure the cube but this doesn’t seem possible….

2

Unfortunately, Shapr is designed so that any time a solid is modified by a mesh with a Boolean operation, the result is always a mesh. The reason being It’s much easier to convert a solid to a mesh than vice versa.

3

Thanks for the confirmation. I ended up tracing the profile and creating a body from there. A bit slower but got the job done.

4

Wow, I didn’t even know booleans were possible with meshes at all.