Extrude
Extrude pushes the closed areas you picked in a sketch along the sketch's normal to make a solid. The result can be a new body, or it can be joined to or cut from an existing body.
Extruding an area
- In an open sketch, switch what clicking does to Areas.
- Click inside one or more closed areas. ⇧-click adds or removes an area. The extrusion bar appears as soon as an area is picked.
- Choose the Result.
- Set the Distance: type it, or drag the grip on the canvas. An outline on the canvas shows the extent.
- Press Extrude.
- Press Exit when you have finished with the sketch.
Nothing is created, joined or cut until you press Extrude. While the solid is being built, a progress note and Cancel appear in its place.
Result
| Result | What it does |
|---|---|
| New body | Makes a separate body from the picked areas. |
| Join | Adds the extruded shape to the target body. |
| Cut | Removes the extruded shape from the target body. |
Join and Cut need a target body, which is named under the controls. When you sketch on a face, the target is the body that face belongs to. When you sketch on a plane, select the body you want to join to or cut from before you start the sketch.
Direction
The readout under the distance says which way the extrusion runs: Along the normal or Against the normal for a plane sketch, Away from the face or Into the body for a face sketch. Press the arrow button beside it to reverse the direction.
Through all
For Join and Cut, turn on Through all to extrude the whole way through the target body. The distance is worked out from the target's own size along the sketch normal, so the cut clears both faces even if the body later gets thicker. The distance readout then says Through all.
This is the usual way to cut a hole: sketch a circle on a face, pick it as an area, choose Cut and Through all.
Holes inside an area
If the area you pick has another closed shape inside it, that inner shape stays open as a hole through the extrusion. A rectangle with a circle inside it extrudes as a plate with a hole.
Changing an extrusion later
Select the body and its extrusion feature in the Parameters inspector. You can change its Distance there; the inspector also names the sketch it was built from.
To change the profile, edit the sketch: right-click it in the bodies list and choose Edit. When you exit the sketch, the body is rebuilt from the new curves.
If a change cannot be built, the body keeps showing its last valid shape, the status bar says so, and the change is not applied.