Removing duplicate surfaces in box formation

Hi,

I am trying to get rid of all the interior face in the collection of boxes. Here i show a small sample of them, 41 in total, but I am trying to do this on a much larger scale with hundreds of them. I am trying to identify the faces that are in the exact same place and cull both of them out. I know that i could Boolean them all together but it would take forever.. I am looking for a much more efficient way. I have looked at http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/double-surfaces?page=1&am... and didn't find a solution.

Separate boxes

Here is the desired result with part of it pulled apart to show how there is no interior faces.

Help would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Attachments:

41 boxes.3dm, 886 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Hannes Löschke on March 29, 2012 at 2:51pm

Have you tried to Boolean the boxes together? (Solid Union in Intersect-Tab)

Permalink Reply by Connor Nicholas on March 29, 2012 at 2:54pm

yes i have done that and i also turned them all into mesh quads then booleaned them, which decreased time, but I was looking for a faster way because i am going to be doing it with probably around 1000 boxes...

Permalink Reply by Hannes Löschke on March 29, 2012 at 3:11pm

Okay, I see.

How about this:

- explode all boxes

- calculate area/centroid of each face

- check if centroid has duplicates.

- cull faces with unique centroids...

-> BRep join remaining faces

Permalink Reply by Connor Nicholas on March 29, 2012 at 3:25pm

This what I got so far. I am not very good with lists and culling... cant seem to figure out how to remove the point or lines that were removed the first time. How do you find the unique centroids?