SpaceClaim Course, Session 10: Practical Fill Tool

Description

1. Introduction

In this session, we focus on the FILL Tool in SpaceClaim to clean, repair, and complete complex geometries. You’ll learn how to remove fillets, chamfers, holes, and extruded features by extending adjacent faces. We’ll cover Patch Fill, selection strategies, and when to enable Tangent to All Sides for smooth continuity. Guide Curves will be used to control surface flow and achieve predictable, high-quality results. By the end, you’ll be able to choose the right approach for each case and execute FILL with confidence.

2. Objectives

The aim of this session is the hands-on application of the FILL Tool’s use cases. Through practical examples, you will see how to use this command to remove holes and extruded parts from your geometry.

In the geometry shown in the figure, we have attempted to illustrate various fillets and chamfers, as well as holes and extruded features connected to a single geometry, so that you can become more familiar with how to execute this command.

3. Challenges of Using Fill Tool

Using the FILL Tool is always accompanied by certain challenges, and in this session we address one of the most important and common ones. As explained in this tutorial, when you use this command, the software removes the selected geometry by extending the adjacent and related faces and then replaces it. In this session, examples matching the provided figures are included so that you can become familiar with these challenges and how to resolve them.

The figure above is a good example of the challenges we face when using the FILL Tool. Our issue here is the bottom face, which is not aligned with the rest of this area, and the software cannot extend the geometry in a way that removes that portion. In this session, the solution to this problem is explained.

The figure above is another example of situations where we run into trouble removing geometry. As you can see, the cylindrical sections before and after the selected geometry are not the same size, and the software has difficulty removing the selected portion. The solution to this issue is also explained in this tutorial.

4. Summary

This session introduced the FILL command for removing holes, extrusions, fillets, and chamfers. We saw how SpaceClaim extends adjacent faces to eliminate the selected region and replace it with a new surface. We tackled issues like a misaligned bottom cross-section or mismatched neighboring sizes using Split Face and careful selection strategy. We also used Patch Fill, Tangent to All Sides, and Guide Curves to control smoothness and the surface flow.