Surface Cut Direction Change

[GeorgeCC]

Hi all, this is my first post so I hope this is the correct area.

I work in a design office with six machines running Solidworks, we have a long standing problem with the Surface Cut tool. We use the tool with surfaces either created in Solidworks ourselves or imported from other CAD suites. The problem occurs if we either tweak the construction of this surface, or we updated the imported surface with a new version, the Surface Cut tool will often flip the cut direction.

It's easy enough for us to enter the Surface Cut feature in the design tree and manually flip the cut direction to counteract the issue, but the surface cut is often at the top of the design tree of a complicated part with many features looking back at it, so it can sometimes take hours to correct. The surface could then be tweaked again and the cut can flip back to the original direction, meaning we then have to re-correct it.

Has anyone else seen this issue and do they have a work around?

Thanks

[Dwight]

George

I see this. Sorry, I have no fix.

Dwight

[zxys001]

Hello GeorgeCC,
Surface selection orders can easily flip the directions and references to them which can fall out of ordered, direction or be lost.
It's not always the user, sometimes an earlier/later edge/surface/face or isoparms may change orientation and the house of cards falls.
It's the nature of the beast that we have to reconstruct at times. (not fun)
Trying to be consistent with your process is the best I can offer.
Otherwise, when working with Surfaces, make sure you have VOR On (image)

[bnemec]

Without seeing some examples of what you're trying to do this might be bad suggestion, so take that into consideration. Avoid using surfaces in that type of workflow. I understand that sometimes we need to work with surfaces, don't get me wrong. But I get the feeling (both from working with SE and SW) that it's happier with solids. So consider making a new solid body from the surface then do operations from there. Sometimes we can thicken the imported surface to make a solid body or draw a profile at a plane some distance out from the surface and extrude up to surface. Then you can do boolean operations or cut/extrude from or up to body etc. Again, maybe that workflow won't work in what you're trying to do I don't know. I've just learned that when surface is needed the sooner I can get back to working with solid bodies the better.

[DanPihlaja]

Without seeing some examples of what you're trying to do this might be bad suggestion, so take that into consideration. Avoid using surfaces in that type of workflow. I understand that sometimes we need to work with surfaces, don't get me wrong. But I get the feeling (both from working with SE and SW) that it's happier with solids. So consider making a new solid body from the surface then do operations from there. Sometimes we can thicken the imported surface to make a solid body or draw a profile at a plane some distance out from the surface and extrude up to surface. Then you can do boolean operations or cut/extrude from or up to body etc. Again, maybe that workflow won't work in what you're trying to do I don't know. I've just learned that when surface is needed the sooner I can get back to working with solid bodies the better.

When I need a a surface as my end item, there are times where I have thickened my beginning surface to create a solid. Done my operations as need on that solid, then copied the surface that I needed from the solid. Then, as the final step, add a delete body feature to clean it all up.

[AlexB]

Alternatively, you could use the Split command with the "consume cut bodies" option or delete the bodies you don't want after the split with "Delete/Keep Bodies" when it's completed. This doesn't rely on surface direction and still performs the same way.