I recently took an STL file and imported it into SolidWorks, and I aimed to smooth it out and fix some details--it's made of a lot of polygons right now, and I don't intend to leave it like that.
I've tried several things, but I can't seem to make it anything other than a surface body, and I can't seem to give it thickness or smooth out the areas in which I need curves. Anyone have some suggestions? (Aside from remaking the part from scratch)
Hello Zack,.. yeah,.. as Chris has said.. a polygon/mesh modeler is best for most of this.. then, if you want to smooth this out or interpolate this into a smooth surface you'd need tools to convert the polymesh into surfaces... so, as is, the Scanto3D tools.. can help,.. or there are third party tools for using/creating nurbs SubD's.
I played with it.. and it's easy to create a solid.. fill the bottom opening and knit.. make solid.
also doing some export/imports using other tools.. exporting as STEP to Rhino3D.. export as OBJ (mesh) and remeshing as Quads using Instant Meshes,.. saveas a *.OBJ ... and open the mesh in Fusion360 to convert to a nurbs SubD... export as STEP and open in SW.
Not fun.. but yeah, you get a solid but not very good.. so, redesigning in SW using curves and Surface patches would be best/cleaner.. imho.
Fusion 360 (T-Splines) and PowerSurfacing allow edges to be specified as hard (crease) and still create smooth surfaces using SubDs.
Edge weighting allows for softer edges.
Chris,.. yes, using the subd tools within those packages can re-create the shape as well.
..btw,.. had to also try a subd output using Rhino (not supported but included in V6).. not bad but still a lot of work.
I see...It's actually been close to two and a half years since I've used solidworks or any other 3D modelling program, and yet I managed to get myself neck-deep in this project... eheh...
Anyway. Thank you for your help. I guess I'm just going to have to spend a couple weeks teaching myself how to use Blender XD
And thank you too, Chris Dordoni
If you manage to find a solution, please feel free to let me know, however! I thank you for your time and patience!
Sorry Zack, you may be better off with a polygonal modeller like Blender for this, although Meshmixer might be able to do the thickening.
Otherwise .....