Making a negative mold from a positive model

[RBobroski]

I am trying to make a fixture that can hold a brush tip so it can be easily cut in a bandsaw in exactly the right place. The contour of the brush requires a swept blend, and while I can model the protrusion no problem i seem to be having difficulty making the same shape as a cut. So I was wondering if it was at all possible to model the brush and then imprint its shape onto a surface?

You think the best option is to just mate the brush feature the surface in an assembly and then use that as a pseudo skeleton model to make the cavity around?

 

[dgallup]

Make your brush, make your holder, assemble them then edit/component operations/cutout

 

[aafuni]

Do you by any chance have the advanced assembly set (I think that is the license I am thinking of)? If you have that you can insert a model into another model as a boolean subtraction. You can model what you want your fixture to look like, then subtract out the part it will be holding. You will probably have to thicken your model a bit to allow for clearance.

You can also use the mold feature (if you have that, which I am guessing you don't). The mold application will do exactly what you are looking for, including offsets to allow the part to be easily removed.

-AAFuni

 

[RBobroski]

Thank you, dgallup, that worked exactly as I had hoped.

 

[RBobroski]

Another question related to the same topic; If I want to perform a component cut out operation and the reference component is hollow, how would I remove the entire volume as opposed to the surfaces? I have complex conical shapes that I am subtracting out and I keep getting little floating interior pieces that I have to remove through a series of extruded cuts and revolves which tends to be tedious. I used the search function but the only thing I came up with related to this topic has no responses and is closed.