An Advanced Level Understanding of Boolean Part Workbench

Boolean operators are strong tools you will need to employ at some point in the design modeller. They are used to pick different solids to subtract or add or while using the suppress solid option. You can locate the body operation option under the create heading. When a designer has multiple entities to work with, these Boolean procedures function very similarly to those found in the Part Design workbench. Multiple profile forms can be combined using the sketcher workbench's Boolean functions. 

This article will help you understand the errors that happen in Boolean Workbench at an advanced level.

Negative Body Concept in Boolean Workbench

When we insert an additional body apart from our main body, we use to see a positive sign over the body symbol. This simply means the body is a positive body.

Now lets create some additional body inside the body 2 and add it with the main part body.

Now lets insert one more body i.e.body 3 and that too has a positive sign.

Now let’s pad a circle inside the new body 3.

After padding, the body 3 remains with that positive sign.

Now let's delete the pad that has been done inside the body 3 and perform a pocket operation instead. Also, keep the fact in mind that what we are about to pocket is an empty body(body.3) in which there is no other operation performed. Unless it is boolean with the existing bodies (body.4 and body2) that were created previously, body 3 remains independent.

After going with the pocket operation, you may notice that the body sign has turned from positive (+) to negative(-). Also when we click ok to the new pocket operation, instead of removing materials from the base body, it creates itself into a solid. Here the pocket operation got changed to pad operation along with the sign change.

The actual explanation here is that when we tried to pocket on an empty space created by body 3, instead of removing material from the empty space, it filled itself over the volume that was used by the pocket operation. The negative sign indicates the same reverse operation. 

Now lets delete the pocket and try to pad a rectangle over the body 3.

After deleting the pocket, the negative sign is now changed to positive and it stays in positive even after doing the pad. This is because the pad is a positive operation here. We are creating something in empty space.

Now let's define the same body 3 and go with the pocket operation on our previous circular sketch. This time, since we have a solid inside body 3 i.e. rectangular body, the pocket will remove material from the rectangular solid.

Something interesting here is that, even though the material got removed from pad 4 inside body 3, the material inside the rectangular base(pad 1, body 4) stays there without getting pocketed. This is because the rectangular base(pad 1) is not a part of body.3.

Now, if we define the part body(main body) and remove booleans with body 3, we have our final result in which the space used by the body 3 is removed by the boolean.