Have you inserted a mesh body but need to make edits parametrically? This tutorial has you covered. Whether you have 3D scanned a part and need to refine it or want to edit a mesh file you downloaded, you’ll want to convert your mesh file into a solid body to enable parametric modeling capabilities.

We’ll show you three ways to convert a mesh into a solid body and explain the difference between the several kinds of mesh conversion in Autodesk Fusion.

How to Convert Mesh to a Solid Body

To convert from mesh to solid, go to the Mesh tab. Click Modify then look for Convert Mesh.

You might see a warning saying the mesh has more than 10,000 triangles, but that is nothing to worry about. It simply means that your mesh is a larger size and will take longer to convert them. If you do get any further errors when converting your mesh to a solid body, it might be worth using the Mesh tools in Fusion to edit the number of facets or faces on your mesh before converting. That will likely resolve any issues you have with the conversion process.

Parametric vs. Base Conversion

If needed, you can edit the mesh by right-clicking on the feature in your timeline and clicking the Edit feature. You might need to do this if you need to edit the number of faces and facets on your mesh before conversion.

You will have two options at this point- parametric or base feature. The parametric option will create individual faces for each mesh face. Once you convert your mesh you’ll see that you no longer have as many faceted options and lines on your model, resulting in a cleaner look. The base feature will create a copy of your mesh body.

Sometimes when you convert your mesh, you end up with a surface body instead of a solid body. This could be due to errors in your mesh workspace. Errors of this type are uncommon but may happen in more complicated meshes. When one of the mesh triangles errors in the conversion, your body is no longer enclosed when it converts. This is why we end up with a surface body rather than a solid body.

There are several ways you can go about fixing this. If you can find an open surface you can create a patch for it. Then, you stitch the patch to the existing body, creating a solid body.

Organic Conversion

Organic conversions do three conversions in one- from the tri-mesh to quad-mesh, then through to T-spline, and then through to that B-rep boundary representational model depending on if you use the base feature or parametric option.

If you’re in the parametric option and then change from faceted to organic, we can select our resolution, accuracy, and whether we want to pre-process holes or not. You’ll end up with an organic mesh that is much less regimented than that tri-spline mesh that you get with previous features.

The difference with the base feature is that this won’t go all the way through to the B-Rep Stage. Instead, this takes you through to the T-spline stage, and you can edit this mesh if required before converting through to your B-rep model.

Now you know how to convert mesh bodies into solid bodies in Fusion. Check out the official Fusion YouTube channel for more valuable learning content!