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Combine Error - Cannot create new bodies

Question asked by Charles Culp on Jul 30, 2008
Latest reply on Feb 2, 2017 by Jean-Sébastien Vincent

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I'm using Combine>Add to combine 3 Solid bodies into one. They are all touching each other with no interference (I'm going to troubleshoot that myself here after I get done posting).

This is a model that was created in SW2006, that is now being adapted for a new purpose. Has anyone ever gotten this error before, or can you explain why I am getting this error for a Combine>Add? It just intuitively doesn't make any sense to me, unless I was trying to combine 3 bodies that aren't touching each other... Is that what it thinks?

Charles Culp Jul 30, 2008 5:07 PM

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Hah! Re-selecting the bodies (3) in a different order fixed it.

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Deepak Gupta Jul 30, 2008 4:46 PM
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Charles can you upload your file for a look. May be at some point or area, there can be some kind of overlapping or interference. Just a guess.
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Charles Culp Jul 30, 2008 4:52 PM
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Sorry, the file is huge and complex, not to mention proprietary. I'm not sure I could even replicate it to upload a similar problem, but I might try replicating it if I can't get anywhere this afternoon.
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- Deepak Gupta @ Charles Culp on Jul 30, 2008 4:56 PM
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  Just for a try, export all the three bodies as 3 different part. Then either make a assembly of them or call then in a single part file and then check if combine still gices the error.
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  - Charles Culp @ Deepak Gupta on Jul 30, 2008 5:07 PM
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    Hah! Re-selecting the bodies (3) in a different order fixed it.
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    - Jerry Steiger @ Charles Culp on Jul 30, 2008 7:24 PM
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      Charles,
      
      Do you find that to be absurd? I certainly do. Why would the order of selection matter to the addition of three parts?
      
      If you've got the time, it might be interesting to try the various combinations out to see what happens. I wonder if the original order will work as well. You could also try deleting the feature and recreating it to see if the original order works now.
      
      Curious minds want to know!
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      - Albert Whatmough @ Jerry Steiger on Jul 30, 2008 7:26 PM
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        It is crazy.. sometimes you can add two together.. and then and the third on in a second combine...
        
        Guess it is somethign that needs to be "fixed"
        
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        Jerry Steiger @ Albert Whatmough on Jul 31, 2008 2:21 AM
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        Al,
        
        Yes, I've run into several situations like that. I'm guessing that it may have something to do with tiny differences in the numbers that define the vertex and edge locations, but who knows what it really is. It always makes me very nervous.
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        Charles Culp @ Jerry Steiger on Jul 31, 2008 12:12 PM
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        Jerry,
        
        I have one model, that has exterior surfaces done with surface-bodies. When I was done, I had to go back and significantly change the shape due to customer requests. The very first surface I created was basically deleted.
        
        Of course, this did not make Solidworks happy. In the end to keep my parent/child relations intact, I recreated the surface by moving it far away from the model, and making it a seperate body. If I would have deleted it, all the "child" features would have automatically been deleted. Even though the child features weren't actually related to the parent. So in that model there is a flat surface off in space that is just hidden. If you try and delete it, all sorts of features will come up as child features, even though they are completely unrelated.
        
        Weird quirk, doesn't really mean the end of the world, just means there is an extra hidden body in the model. If anyone else tried to "figure out what was going on", they would probably spend hours just to find out that it serves no real purpose.
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        Jerry Steiger @ Charles Culp on Jul 31, 2008 8:55 PM
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        Charles,
        
        It's weird situations like this that make me wonder what is going on inside the code. These strange lingering relationships that can't be seen are really spooky, whether they are in a sketch or between features.
        
        In your particular case, couldn't you delete the surface body after the last of its "children"? That way it doesn't need to be moved off in space and won't show up unexpectedly and confuse other people.
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        Charles Culp @ Jerry Steiger on Aug 1, 2008 12:46 PM
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        Sure, I suppose I could. I just "hid" it, which is basically the same thing. Delete body is really just "super-hide" anyway. I actually "delete" bodies whenever the additional body can be too confusing.
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    - Jean-Sébastien Vincent @ Charles Culp on Feb 2, 2017 5:38 PM
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      I've just had the same problem happen to me (I split a body into two so that I could do fillets on their ''common'' edges, then couldn't combine them back together).
      
      Your solution worked, thank you
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Charles Culp Jul 30, 2008 7:35 PM
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Jerry,

If I re-create the feature then it does not matter which order I select the bodies (that's actually how I troubleshooted the problem). It was only a problem when editing the feature that already existed. Of course, just recreating the feature would not have worked for this model. It was half way down the feature tree, and would have ruined plenty of child features later on.
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- Jerry Steiger @ Charles Culp on Jul 31, 2008 2:17 AM
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  Charles,
  
  I wish the person who wrote the combine code could have seen this happen. It's got to illuminate some really dark corner in the code.
  
  It's great that you managed to get it to work without having to delete and recreate. I've had a number of occasions where I have had to "fix" broken surface trims very creatively to keep from losing the feature and a couple where I finally bit the bullet and deleted the feature. Sometimes you can insert an identical feature before the broken one, delete the bad one and fix the resulting errors, but other times you are stuck with a huge batch of features that delete with it. And people wonder why I keep asking for more robust code!
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Combine Error - Cannot create new bodies

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