I use the acoustic modeling software I SIMPA where I have to import a structure in surfaces.
As surface modeling is complicated on Solidworks (sketch extrusion, plan management) for a beginner ... I ask you if it is possible to select a volume and keep only the surfaces.
I'm not talking about the shell tool, the thickness must be zero.
I take this opportunity to ask you if you can easily create a custom mesh (in my case cubic)
and if you know of a free surface modeling software where I can model a room with cubes in it (see attachment)
Yes. Several methods but the one that works well in your case is the 0 offset. Select the volume faces and (in the surface menu) click on "offset surface". Set the distance to 0. Then hide or delete the volumes. That's all.
You have to do it again for each volume but it goes fast. Use the selection filter (face) to go faster in the selection.
You know, here you are on a forum with contributors who mainly use Solidworks and Catia, so we know that it only takes a few minutes to align cubes made in surface as you mention. Surface = walls without volume, i.e. without thickness.
However, beware of the dreaded trick that is the file format which causes a lot of difficulties. I suggest that you base your search on the file formats that I SIMPA can use, avoiding cascading conversions. There is abundant documentation on the different file formats that can be used by I SIMPA.
To answer your question you have MeshMixer, and others, but do they have the export format you want such as Sketchup???
We must remove the volume sizes, not the functions imported with the delete key.
But it is also enough to hide them.
I just tested, all the faces of all the volumes can be selected (with face filter enabled and selection window). No need to do volume by volume as I said above.
Using the Offset Surface method proposed by @soring, another way to isolate surfaces is to select all polygon bodies, right-click the context menu, and then select the Insert in New Part option. Advantage: Only selected polygon bodies are exported, which is your goal. Disadvantage: in the exported file, the creation logic is lost and subsequent changes will not be simple.
Since the objects you create are parallelepipeds, I think the easiest way would be to work directly with the polygon features in SolidWorks. The attached file will give you a process of generating a few "cubes", using a single sketch and several extrusions, with different offsets and lengths. Disadvantage: extrusions create surface "tubes", which must then be closed at the ends with flat surfaces... Kind regards
It's okay, I do have a surface structure (at least I think) \o/
Well, I still have problems on I SIMPA:( But it's not your fault.
Basically, he says that some faces cross (the machine and the ground) despite the fact that I tried by removing the bottom surface of the machines...
So I have a quick question, could it be that the face of a machine goes through the ground if I constrained the surface with the outside face of the floor?
