- To use the Thicken command we have a couple requirements.
One is that we have all of our surfaces knitted together
so we have one uniform body.
As you can see here I created what is called
a surface revolve which is already one uniform body.
Then I have the surface plane here at the bottom,
which I then created a ruled surface on,
and then I knitted that together
so I have one uniform surface.
So up here I have my first surface and my second one.
Then I can go up here to Thicken
and I'm going to choose my surface to thicken.
I'm going to choose this one right here.
And then I have the option of which way
I want to thicken it.
Either I want to thicken it on the outside
or on the inside, and if you zoom in you can see
a preview of what's going to happen here.
So I can switch it from the inside to the outside
or I can go midplane and go both directions.
So in this case here I want to go only to the inside.
Let's try it at a .2 and then click on Ok.
And just that easily it went from a surface body
to a solid body and now this is a regular solid body.
It shows up under my Solid Bodies folder and there it is.
Now I can use just about any of my regular
solid modeling techniques to operate on this part.
When I look at this one over here,
if I try Thicken again on that one,
I can click on that surface and I can thicken it
either inside or outside,
and I'm going to go to the inside on that one.
And then notice because it's an enclosed volume
it gives me the option of trying to create
a solid from that.
Now it's only going to give me this option
if it is an enclosed volume so in this case it is.
Go ahead and click on Ok.
That grays out the thickness because it's just going
to fill it all in with material.
Click on Ok and bam, now we've got a solid.
So let's section it in half and you can see that both
of these are completely solid on the inside.
That is the Thicken command.
It is a very, very handy tool
especially when you're designing something in surfaces first
but in the end of the day you want to go to a solid
the Thicken command is the one to use for that.