Creating a solid object from surfaces? (Newbie)

I'm brand new to Grasshopper and have been attempting to make a parametric barnacle-like structure that can be eventually 3D printed. I've been able to create the geometry that I want (at least in appearance), but I'm having some trouble figuring out how to turn my various pieces into a truly solid mesh.

The definition I'm working with (definition.png) gives me four loft surfaces - the inner and outer walls, and the top/bottom caps. However, when I bake the geometry I end up with 4 separate pieces (pieces.png) rather than one solid object.

I've tried several different components to merge these pieces together, but so far they all seem to act on each of the 4 pieces individually rather than merging all of them together into 1.

How can I take my various pieces and construct a solid object from them?

I am able to Bake and Export what I already have and slice it up for printing, but there are some strange artifacts that don't make me confident in the printing. When I run the STL through a mesh repair program like meshmixer I get lots of odd problems that it don't get repaired correctly.

Attachments:

preview.png, 407 KB
definition.png, 358 KB
four-pieces.png, 407 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Birk Binnard on January 30, 2016 at 2:22pm

Yes, the GH BrepJoin command is only a convenience - it simply lets you reference one object instead of many. I have not been able to find a way to replicate Rhino's Join command in GH; i. e., I don't know if GH has a way of truly joining multiple objects of the same type together into a single one. This sure would be a nice feature to have.

Permalink Reply by Pieter Segeren on January 30, 2016 at 1:47pm

Hi zenwebb,
here's my two cents. Hope it contributes to getting to your goal.

Attachments:

barnacles_PSG.gh, 12 KB

Permalink Reply by zenwebb on January 30, 2016 at 5:34pm

Wow, that is such a slick solution! Seems to do exactly what I was hoping for. Clearly you know a thing or two about Grasshopper! Makes complete sense and learned a couple things I did not know could be done.

Thanks!