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Question asked by 1-9C36HC on Aug 28, 2008
Latest reply on Feb 4, 2009 by Matt Lombard

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I'm helping one of our developers here at SolidWorks to try and get some critical feedback on the current limitations of our Extend Surface capability namely:

- multiple face edges breaking appart when extending
- multiple face edges extending at different lengths
- multiple face edge combination simply not extending
- edge extends in unexpected way or direction

If you'd like to give direct feedback on the current limitations of the extend feature, can you please email me at: Mark.Biasotti@3ds.com and I will put you intouch with the developer directly.

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John Kreutzberger Aug 28, 2008 8:46 PM
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Good idea, Mark. One thing I have noticed is that the extend to surface hardly ever works. I keep geting the message: `up-to surface is invalid'. Often what I end up doing is extend by a length past where I wanted to go and then I trim with that same surface that was called invalid.

I could be using this wrong, but since it never seems to do what I am looking for-I just don't use it for extending to a surface.

I also have problems with one of the items on your list. That is different edges expending in different directions ot in unexpected directions.

jk
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Roland Schwarz Aug 29, 2008 12:30 PM
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Interesting. I had always just accepted these issues, assuming they were caused somehow by corrupt surface definition.
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Charles Culp Aug 29, 2008 2:27 PM
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Just this morning I used extend face and it worked (create the feature in the feature manager tree) and then the whole surface disappeared. No, it's not the video card. I couldn't even select it anymore. The strangest thing...
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Mike Wilson Sep 1, 2008 3:43 AM
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I've always wished there were a 'reverse' option in the Extend command. That is to say, instead of adding to the surface, it would trim it by the said amount.
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John Ferguson Sep 1, 2008 11:04 AM
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Michael,

As a work around I have in the past used Face Curves to create a curve to trim to.
You'll need to figure out the trim length as a percentage of the full length of the surface.

HTH,
Muggs
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- Mike Wilson @ John Ferguson on Sep 2, 2008 4:02 PM
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  Good idea! Thanks Muggs
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  - 1-9C36HC @ Mike Wilson on Sep 2, 2008 5:38 PM
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    Thanks for the replies guys. Any of you willing to have a phone conversation with one of our developers? If so, email me at mark.biasotti@3ds.com
    
    Thanks
    
    Mark
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    - Jason McCormick @ 1-9C36HC on Sep 4, 2008 3:10 PM
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      I don't know if this relates, but I do reverse engineering on tool and die stampings. I have no problems extending surfaces that have been created in SW. It is the imported surfaces that I have trouble extending. I have found that intersecting patches and grids cause all sorts of problems. Before I even think about taking it to SW, I use Geomagic to manipulate the patches. I extract the curves and then construct patehes and grids that are as close to 90 degrees as I can get them. I then save the surface as an .igs file. When I bring it into SW, I can extend any edge.
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      - Ben Paprocki @ Jason McCormick on Sep 26, 2008 2:40 PM
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        Most of the time when I have problems with extending surfaces, it is with a surface that was offset from another. That is when I see the extended surfaces try to pull away from each other, or not work at all. But the biggest thing that drives me nuts with the extend surface tool is that it will show a preview of the extended surface that looks great, but when I go to accept the feature I get the ever useful error "Operation failed due to geometric condition". How can it show a preview and then not work!?!
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        1-9C36HC @ Ben Paprocki on Sep 26, 2008 3:35 PM
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        Thank you for all the feedback so far. I put some of you in touch with our developer that is looking into this issue for a future release. I think we've got all the issues that you've expressed summarized.
        
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        1-GDXXBU @ 1-9C36HC on Dec 19, 2008 5:45 PM
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        Mark,
        
        When extending alot of edges together, I often get the "surfaces could not be extended due to a geometry condition" error. Often times, if I select one edge and then build the feature, edit feature, select next edge, build feature...etc, I can get the desired extension. But, if I select them all in one go it throws an error.
        
        Michael Wilson's suggestion of a "reverse" extend would be very useful to me. I would use a reverse extend several times a day if it were available. Pretty please?
        
        I second John's comment about "up to surface" giving the "up-to surface is invalid" error.
        
        I second Jason's comment about extending imported surfaces. I usually cannot extend surfces from Alias at all, think3 is hit or miss, but Rhino and CATIA seem to work pretty well. When I get an error, it refers to a geometry condition, and check entity reveals a general fault and asks that the geometry be re-imported. Trouble is, I have yet to find import settings that work.
        
        I had a particular surface extend that would constantly be forgetting which edges to extend, and another that would fail to rebuild on a verified rebuild, but would build correctly after selecting "edit feature" and then clicking the green checkmark, having made no changes. These features were on the A side and corresponding B side of a plastic part. Mark, I am able to send you this file, if you wish.
        
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        1-9C36HC @ 1-GDXXBU on Dec 19, 2008 8:18 PM
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        Will (and all)
        
        If you have examples that you can share with us and post them here, I'll be sure to get them to the developer that is working on this. If they are too big for the forum or you want to submit them under SW NDA, please let me know and I'll be in touch with you.
        
        thanks
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        John Kreutzberger @ 1-9C36HC on Dec 20, 2008 2:50 PM
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        I have found a limited work-around for getting extend to surface to work. If the target surface happens to be planar-all I need to do is create a plane at a zero distance from that surface and then I can extend to it with no problem. Funny how it won't work using just the surface , but will with a plane.
        
        I realize this has limited applications for swoopy folk, but it has been useful.
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        Randy Neumann @ John Kreutzberger on Feb 3, 2009 9:50 AM
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        I design forming dies from customer data, usually igs or parasolid if I'm lucky. I have found that when extending surfaces for runoff, if the edges take off in different directions, I can extend them a bit, trim them together with a line or curve, and then they will extend together a lot of the time. I know that this means they probably aren't following the origional surface exactly, but in this case it isn't necessary.
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Matt Lombard Feb 3, 2009 1:58 PM
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Mark,

A little late to the party, it looks like. I've recently done a project for a team SW is sponsoring. I used a lot of extends in it. Extends frustrated me a little when you input a distance to extend, say .1, and on one side it extends .001 and in the middle it extends 4. I understand that the closer it is to a rectangular UV the better, but when things are that simple, you don't need to extend.

I don't like getting V notches in extended edges.

I really don't like it when an extend curls. The extend should assume you want to continue the same sort of curvature that the face already has. I get extends that on one end of an edge will get a sharp U and the other end are smooth the way you want it.

Mike Wilson said he wanted the extend to work the other way too, to remove part of the face. I think that's a great idea, especially given the hard times that trim gives me.

I've also had an extend that flipped the extended side to the opposite UV direction. So if I extended the north side of a rectangle, it later extended the south side instead. Weird, kind of the way trims fail. I think Will Smith observed this as well.

I can't post my example, but the situations aren't all that rare. I usually like to avoid extend, but in this case it was better than the alternatives.
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Jeff Mowry Feb 3, 2009 2:29 PM
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I get the split edges all the time, but have found that changing up the combinations of the edges selected for extend will often take care of this. So if I've got 12 edges, I'll skip some of them in one extend feature, then get them in another extend feature. Sometimes this solves the issue, sometimes not--it depends on the combination of which edges are selected in which feature(s).

What kills me is when I've got three surfaces, with one of those surfaces destined to end when extended. Think of a surface on top, a surface on the bottom, with the one in the middle coming eventually to a point within the extend feature. What I'd like to see is a rational way of extend dealing with this. Instead, it hoses the surfaces. It should allow the mid-surface to come to a point and end, with the top/bottom surfaces knitting together after that point, but I get odd hourglass-shaped flips, etc. after.

I can share some files if they're kept confidential/internal. I have two "seed" surface-heavy parts with all sorts of software bugs exhibited within--primarily with trims failing/forgetting surfaces or simply refusing to function anymore. The dumb thing is that the involved surfaces will trim just fine if I roll back just before the failed trim--works exactly as the original trim with no errors. So I have to later carve out that failed feature and patch up my downstream knits, offsets, whatever--with no rational explanation as to why my original trim failed. (I was up past midnight "healing" my model of these very surface bugs just last night--I love it when that happens ;-)
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- Matt Lombard @ Jeff Mowry on Feb 3, 2009 3:03 PM
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  Jeff,
  
  Sometimes I'll use extend to get me part way and hope untrim will go the rest of the way.
  
  I don't run into that 3 surface problem much.
  
  The one where the trim stops working is classic. I've found that "all" you have to do is edit the trim, deselect everything, then reselect. If you wind up with the original result, you don't get cascading dependent failures.
  
  It's like the rest of SolidWorks is a released, functioning product, and surfacing in some cases is pre-alpha test code. On some projects you will really lose your shirt. My most recent project took me 2ce as long as my estimate (which was already 4x what it should have taken me.) It is almost to the point of simply rebuilding the model after every change rather than trying to make parametric changes to it.
  
  I'm trying to learn how to wrangle this stuff, but I'm starting to think that after a certain point, it's totally beyond the user's control.
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Jeff Mowry Feb 3, 2009 6:10 PM
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You know, last night I tried the method of deselecting everything and then reselecting the surfaces and what was to be kept in the trim, but even that wasn't working (!!!). I admit I was cussing well after 11:00PM, fully knowing about the downstream problems of losing a trim feature way up in the tree like that. For one of them (one that didn't work with the deselect/reselect trick) I rolled back to before the trim and it still wouldn't let me create a mutual trim, fresh. So I did two trim operations (non-mutual) and that worked. Just had to roll down the tree slowly (several hundred features) and fix the Knits and other items downstream as I went along. When at the end, I was able to delete the silly failing trim feature.

In this case, the gig was hourly. Still, how do I charge a client for this sort of crap? With this project, the client has to take the fall, since they specified v2008 (doh!), but I really don't like having my clients paying for debugging time. (And I certainly don't like paying for it myself through sleep deprivation.)
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- Matt Lombard @ Jeff Mowry on Feb 4, 2009 3:35 AM
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  Well, 2009 is no better if that's any consolation. I see exactly the same dilemmas here with billing customers for trying to do advanced work with semifunctional software.
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