When I finish creating a manifold surface body (MSB) to turn into a solid, I often am faced with the "Cannot knit surface to itself" error. To solve this, I copy a face, hide the copy, and delete the original. I then have 2 bodies that the knit tool will accept, and make solid. This adds one surface offset, and one delete face per body. This usually happens when the last feature used to create the MSB was a trim feature, which is quite often.

Is there a better way to do this that I am missing?

Perhaps the surface trim tool could recognize post-trim manifold bodies and offer an option to knit them to solid? Perhaps the knit tool could be expanded to be able to handle a single, multi-faceted surface body for a conversion to solid geometry?

It's not a big deal, but with surfacing, I am always trying to cut down on my feature count.

Any thoughts?