SOLIDEDIT in AutoCAD

SOLIDEDIT edits a 3D solid by its faces. It says whether each edit is checked, then asks what to edit: Face, then the face option, then the faces, then what the option needs. Each edit is made at once, and the face options are asked again, so one run can make several edits; eXit or Enter leaves the face options, then the command. A face's neighbours follow it: move a box's top up and its sides grow to meet it.

The solid keeps its layer and properties but loses what made it: a box is no longer a box. The whole run is one undo step, and its Undo takes back the edits one at a time inside it. Enter at the Command: prompt runs it again from the first question. The Solid Editing panel's faces button runs each face option directly. MellowCAD's 3D is solids only, and still partial.

• Command: SOLIDEDIT
• Panel: Modify
• Try it: Open the editor, type SOLIDEDIT and press Enter.

At the command line

The engine draws it and writes its history as you would type it: the prompts in AutoCAD 2027's order, with the same option letters.

Options

Face (F)

The face options. Each asks for faces, until Enter: a click or a point typed takes the face nearest you under it, or the two faces of an edge there, and a face already taken gives the one behind it. Once a face is taken, ALL takes every face of its solid; Remove takes faces out of the set instead, and Undo takes back the last pick. A pick on nothing says No solids detected.. Faces of one solid only.

Extrude (E)

Asks for a height and a taper angle: each face grows into a prism, added to the solid or, with a negative height, taken out of it, narrowing as it rises by a positive angle. Enter at the height takes the last height the primitives or EXTRUDE used.

Move (M)

Asks for a base point and a second point: a flat face moves as far as that runs along its normal, its neighbours carried with it. Enter at the second point takes the base point as the displacement.

Rotate (R)

Asks for an axis, by two points or along the UCS's Xaxis, Yaxis or Zaxis, or square to the screen by View, then an angle: the face turns about it by the right-hand rule.

Offset (O)

Asks for a distance: the face moves out along its normal, or in with a negative one, its neighbours carried with it, round faces about their axis too. An offset as far in as half the largest side of the box round the solid is refused, and says how far it may go.

Taper (T)

Asks for a base point, a point along the axis of tapering and an angle: the face leans about where it meets the plane through the base point, a positive angle leaning it in along the axis.

Delete (D)

Takes away a hole's wall, closing the hole, or a fillet's or a chamfer's strip, giving back the edge it replaced.

Copy (C)

Makes a region of each flat face, where it lies or moved by two points, on the current layer and with the current properties.

Undo (U)

At the face options, takes back the last edit of this run; once there is none left, Command has been completely undone..

eXit (X)

Leaves the face options for the first question, and that question's leaves the command; Enter does the same.

What it does not do yet

Edge and Body, and the faces' coLor and mAterial, which are offered and refused, as are Extrude's Path, Rotate's axis by object and its Reference angle. Crossing, Fence and CPolygon to select faces. Moving, rotating, tapering or copying a curved face, offsetting one among other neighbours, deleting one that is not a hole's wall or a strip, and an edit that changes the solid's shape so much that a face wears another away. Edits beside a face extruded with a taper. An offset too far out to make, which AutoCAD drops in silence and MellowCAD makes. A preview while you give a distance or an angle.

What it does and still lacks, in detail (in English)

Questions

How do I edit a 3D solid in AutoCAD?

Run SOLIDEDIT, choose Face and then what to do: Extrude or Move a face to make the solid taller, Delete to fill a hole, Taper to slope a side. Pick the faces, press Enter and answer the option's prompts. For a quick push or pull, PRESSPULL drags a face too.

How do I extrude a face of a 3D solid?

SOLIDEDIT, Face, Extrude, pick the face and press Enter, then the height and the taper angle: the session's 15 and 15 raise a frustum on a box's top.

How do I remove a hole from a solid?

SOLIDEDIT, Face, Delete, pick the hole's wall and press Enter: the hole is filled. The same takes a fillet or a chamfer away.

What is the difference between SOLIDEDIT and PRESSPULL?

PRESSPULL moves one face by a drag or a distance, square to itself. SOLIDEDIT does that and more: it tapers, turns, offsets, deletes and copies faces, several at once.

Related commands

• PRESSPULL in AutoCAD
• FILLETEDGE in AutoCAD
• EXTRUDE in AutoCAD
• SUBTRACT in AutoCAD