Guys,

I have tried this in the past and been unsuccessful, we've had customers send us the "nest" files per say and would build up anything around it that we required but I am looking to stray away from that and be able to do it myself. Before I go further I must note I'm pretty amateur when it comes to solidworks, most of what I do is machine and panel layout... a lot of holes and cut-out patterns on 2D surfaces usually so apologies for my ignorance! Now on to the question at hand...

I've attached a picture. But basically what I have is a part (for this we'll say a smoke detector ) so you can visualize the surfaces, empty spacing, etc that type of part might have. I can set the part in the block, and remove what I need for a nest there's just one thing... it leaves material where the part is hollow. I am assuming I need to either A) fill the part to a solid or B) tell mold tools (or use a different function all together) to remove that as well. I dont know how to do either, and maybe I'm not even thinking correctly. For what it's worth, with some searching I was able to find and use the "shut off surfaces" function, but only to an extent, the part has a lot of uneven and off surfaces and again... I really dont know exactly what I'm doing, or what I should be doing. Thanks for any and all help!