4 Replies Latest reply on Apr 22, 2011 9:06 PM by Daniel Herzberg

    Unable to section or trim surface bodies

    Daniel Herzberg
    Daniel Herzberg Apr 22, 2011 11:09 AM

      I'm working on a part which was imported from Pro/E.  It's a jumbled mess of imported solids and surfaces all in one part.  When I try to section it, so I can see inside, I get the message:

       

      "Sectioning at this position will produce invalid bodies. Please select a different section position."

       

       

      Offsetting the sectoin plane doesn't help, and neither does trimming manually.  I can cut the solid bodies away, but when I try to trim or split the surface bodies, I get a message saying:

       

      "Unable to trim due to error in target body"

       

      Note there are no rebuild errors on this body (all bodies with errors are suppressed).

       

      Is there any way areound this?

       

      Thanks

       

      DH

       

      PS I won't be able to provide any files or images.

        • Re: Unable to section or trim surface bodies
          Charles Culp
          Charles Culp Apr 22, 2011 11:19 AM (in response to Daniel Herzberg)

          Have you turned on verification on rebuild when you do that CTRL-Q force rebuild? I assume you have run import diagnostics on the import, as well?

           

          Try hiding bodies to find out which one is causing the error. If you can narrow it down to the face that is bad, try using the delete tool with the delete and patch option. This should try and recreate that face.

          • Re: Unable to section or trim surface bodies
            Steve Ostrovsky
            Steve Ostrovsky Apr 22, 2011 11:27 AM (in response to Daniel Herzberg)

            I have seen this before, but it's been a while. Found this in the KB - Solution Id: S-019130

             

            The section plane used may be producing the invalid bodies; bodies with a 'zero-length' geometry condition. This is not supported by SolidWorks. A workaround for this is offsetting the section plane by a minute value (say, .01mm) and then doing the sectioning.

             

            One example of this problem can be when the section plane is tangential to the surface of a hole. See some other illustrations of this problem in the help documentation topic 'zero-length geometry'.

            • Re: Unable to section or trim surface bodies
              Daniel Herzberg
              Daniel Herzberg Apr 22, 2011 9:06 PM (in response to Daniel Herzberg)

              It turns out, the only workaround I found was to offset a manual section (as in, cutting and trimming all the bodies in a new config.  Offsetting the section view itself didn't work, but offsetting the cut did.  This part has over 100 bodies (imported from Pro/E) so it's very hard to work with (and verification on rebuild would have melted the computer, I'm sure).  And this is just one aprt in an enourmous assembly.  I have a feeling I'll be asking for a lot of help on this one.