Direct Editing: Split

- [Instructor] In this example, we're going to be taking a look at the Split command under the Direct Editing toolbar. So, first things first, go to the Direct Editing toolbar and here's the command we're going to be using. Now, I'm going to be using this sketch, Sketch Number Two, to cut this body into two pieces. So, the first thing is to go ahead and activate the tool. Now, my Trim tool, here, is going to be that sketch, so go ahead and choose Sketch Number Two, right there, and then go ahead and cut that part. So click on that, it's going to cut that part into those two pieces using that sketch. Now, it doesn't have to be a sketch, it could also be some type of a surface, but right now, the sketch works just fine.

Those are the two bodies we want to keep. You can rename 'em if you'd like to, down here. You can also choose the template for saving them out if you want to, but all we really need to do is just go ahead and click on the green check mark, and now we have two independent bodies. So, up here we have Solid Body Number One, and Solid Body Number Two. Now, the great thing about splitting your design into two allows you to work on each one of those bodies independently. So, if I go ahead and I hide the outside, so, I'll go ahead and hide that for right now, I would then do an operation to the top of this surface here.

So, let's go ahead and start a sketch. I'm going to draw a, let's try, maybe like a hexagon right here in the center, and I also want to define a couple of extra lines. So I'm have a line going in this direction here and I'm going to have another line going vertical to define the pattern that I'm going to be using. So, now let's go ahead and do an extruded cut. I'm going to type in Point One, looks fine, click "okay", and there's my first cut in this solid. Okay, now what I want to do, is I want to take this and I want to pattern it around.

So I'm going to go over here to, instead of a linear pattern, I'm actually going to try this one here called a fill pattern. So, click on that. My fill boundary's going to be the outside of this thing, and my spacing, let's type in, maybe, one inch, and my first direction is going to be that little line I drew. So, let's go ahead and show that sketch. Let's show that, and I'm going to choose this direction here, and notice, it automatically fills that area with that pattern. Now, I want it to actually go past the edge. So I'm going to put a negative value here in the margin.

I'm going to say negative one inch, which is going to push that pattern out past the edge. And let's go ahead and try to make this a little bit smaller, so .5, see what happens there. You get a pretty tight pattern that way. And that looks pretty good. So, we want to fill that whole thing in there, and then go ahead and, I want to make sure that I'm only using the selected body. And auto-select turned that off. I want to select just this body here, the one I'm using. And I want to go ahead and cut into that body. So now, I've basically made this whole pattern on the top surface of just that one body.

Now, if I go back and I show my other body, you can see it hasn't been affected at all. Now I've created this really cool pattern on the top of the center piece, and now I have a surrounding body on the outside, and now you probably want to use something like a Combine tool to bring them back together. So let's go ahead and just do that very quickly, by going over to Direct Editing, click on Combine, use the Add tool, click on this body, click on that body, click on Okay, and there we have it, back to one body. So, no two bodies over here, everything looks really good, and that's how you can use the Split command to automatically cut your part in a couple of pieces.

It doesn't have to be just two, you can actually cut it in a bunch of pieces if you'd like to. And then you can operate on each one of those pieces independently, and at the end of the day, you might want to bring those all back together, or save out the individual bodies one by one.