Hi Everyone,

I’d like to take a minute to introduce you to the new SolidWorks Intersect tool since this week is its focus week.  There are a ton of use cases, including:

• Adding open surface geometry to solids
• A fast way to trim and knit open surfaces
• Pulling negative space from models
• Performing selective Boolean operations. 

With this tool, you can input any number of solid bodies, surface bodies, or planes.  Once you do that, click Intersect in the Property Manger (or use the RMB button), and SolidWorks will calculate any closed volume based on the intersections of your input.  Even negative space is fair game and counts as a volume, or “region” as it’s called in the Property Manager.

Once all the different regions are calculated in your model they are shown as a list in the Property Manager.  Simply select the regions you don’t want in your result.  You can do this right from the list in the Property Manager, or directly in the graphics area.  Note any regions that are selected to be removed are shown in a different color on the model preview.  Once you’re finished making your selection, click OK.

Other options include:

• Merge Result:  Choose to merge all the regions you’re keeping, or keep them as separate bodies.

• Consume Surface:  Any input surfaces will be consumed on OK.  This helps keep the amount of surface bodies in your model down to something more manageable. 

• Cap Planar Openings on Surfaces:  With this option enabled, SolidWorks will “cap” any open surfaces to either help with closing them off, or to create a new region.  Note this option is limited to planar openings only.

Also, the regions list in the Property Manger has some extra controls to help with navigating in complex Intersections:

• You may use the arrow keys to go up and down the list. Watch each region highlight in the graphics area preview.  This is useful for hunting out regions that are fully enclosed within the model.  Once you land on a region that you don’t want, simply hit the space bar to select it, and then move on using the arrow keys.

• Click the “circle/slash” icon at the top of the regions list to select all the regions to exclude.  Sometimes it’s more helpful to work in the opposite flow, selecting only the few regions you want to keep.

• Invert Selection:  This button will invert your current selection in the Regions List.  This option is useful if you’re troubleshooting negative space in your design. 

Please take a look at this new feature and let us know what you think, or post any questions you have.  Also, if you have any new and interesting use cases, please share! 

Thanks,

Rob